What Is a Cognitive Map?

作者：Coursera Staff • 更新于 Jun 10, 2025

Cognitive mapping is a method used during user experience (UX) research to create a visual representation of a user’s mental perception of a concept or process.

[Featured image] A UX designer is using cognitive maps to research on their laptop.

A cognitive map is a mental representation of a physical space that helps us understand spatial relationships. In simple terms, it's a mental image. Regarding user experience (UX), cognitive mapping is a diagramming technique that helps UX designers understand how users think about and interact with a product or interface.

How to draw a cognitive map

Cognitive mapping can be done digitally or using paper, whiteboards, sticky notes, and any artist’s tools like pens, pencils, markers, or crayons. Bullet points, illustrations, charts, diagrams, and abstract shapes are all permissible in this free-form problem-solving style.

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Types of cognitive maps: Mind and concept maps

Cognitive maps help UX designers understand the intricacies involved in user experience. They are tools used to visually represent cognitive processing and externalize knowledge. Through cognitive mapping, you will provide context to conceptual relationships and patterns to identify issues and improve user experience with your design.

Mind maps: Mind maps are the most simplistic form of cognitive mapping. They focus on one central idea and use branches to elaborate on the user’s viewpoint with subtopics and thoughts. This hierarchical structure creates an environment layout similar to a tree structure, where the branches and leaves all connect to a root concept. This arrangement helps connect concepts and ideas to one another.

Concept maps: Concept maps often follow a stricter chart structure that reads from top to bottom to encourage deeper logical analysis. The main characteristic of this map is the definition of relationships between concepts. As a rule, the map starts with one node, representing a concept that can parent multiple nodes. Labels define relationships between nodes.

What is Tolman’s cognitive map?

Tolman’s cognitive map is a theory in psychology that proposes how animals, such as humans, build a mental map of their environment to learn its spatial dimensions and navigate it. Edward C. Tolman was an American psychologist at UC Berkeley who studied the behaviors of rats in mazes, and based on the rats' ability to remember details within the mazes and identify shortcuts, he coined the phrase “cognitive map.”

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