Journey Mapping as an approach to exploring lived experience

We propose “Journey Mapping” as a new data collection method to enable participants to reflect upon and express their lived experience via a combination of narrative, visual and creative modalities, resulting in a richer, reflective account of their lived experience. Used in marketing and healthcare settings, journey mapping utilises existing data to create a visual map of the client’s pathway through their service, developing a deeper understanding of how they interact with the service. The principles of this approach can be applied to qualitative data collection, whereby participants create their own visual journey map to reflect upon and express their lived experience.

Journeys are an established narrative technique used in storytelling and identified in research exploring issues such as trauma and wellbeing. Visual and creative data collection approaches also enable participants to explore their experiences in detail and reflect upon their meaning in more authentic, personalised ways. As an episodic approach to data collection, journey mapping can uncover the temporal nature of lived experience, offering participants the opportunity to reflect and focus on specific experiences in more detail.

We report our reflections of using journey mapping with two populations: 1. peer researchers living with long-term conditions; 2. adults living with dyslexia. We will also consider how applying animation to journey mapping could elucidate the dynamic nature of the journey. Specifically, how the added textures of sound, narration and motion and the externalisation of the narrative through the animation process can aid communication, understanding and reflection.