User Experience Mapping and the Peak‑End Rule in Product Design

Good user experience can be designed and defined in advance, and product managers should rely on scientific methods rather than subjective feelings to improve it.

To draw a user‑experience map, start by spending a couple of hours reviewing existing maps, then identify the horizontal and vertical axes and the content they contain.

Examples from abroad and from China are shown to illustrate different visual styles of experience maps.

A user‑experience map visualises the entire journey of a target user in a specific scenario, covering stages, behaviours, thoughts, emotional curves, pain points, pleasure points and opportunities, and ultimately produces improvement proposals for the product.

The article then analyses a classic European‑railway experience map, describing its guiding principles, stages (planning, ticket purchase, travel, post‑travel), behaviours, thoughts, feelings, experience scores, opportunity points and the final goal of identifying product weaknesses and new opportunities.

It introduces the peak‑end rule, stating that users remember only the highest (positive or negative) moments and the final moment of an experience, which should be reflected in the emotional curve of the experience map.

Designers should create positive peaks (high‑value moments) and minimise negative peaks, while also ensuring a good final impression (the "end value").

The article also discusses incentives as a way to increase user retention and activity, giving examples such as membership levels, points, coupons, ads, and gamified achievements, and explains how well‑designed incentives can lead to user addiction.

It reflects on personal experiences with WeChat Reading, showing how achievement reports and progress visualisations reinforce habit formation.

Finally, the piece promotes a "DevOps Engineer" certification program, describing its modules and encouraging readers to enrol.