Summary: Break out of your time frame in journey mapping! Most people map current customer journeys. Along with the current state, future journey mapping can illustrate opportunities, but backward journeys can more deeply illuminate historical context. This can lead to better decision-making.

Journey mapping and conversations about journeys suffer ‘nowism’. Sure, staying in the present feels more real– you’re dealing with what’s in front of you. Yeah, but sometimes you need to pause and reflect on the historical damage your company, system, or organization has done to your users over their lifetimes or across generations. Here, you get clues to better designs that are more inclusive.

The Power of Backwards Journey Mapping

In UX and service design, journey mapping helps teams empathize with users and design better solutions. While traditional maps often focus on future goals, backwards journey mapping shifts the perspective. It examines the lived experiences, decisions, and circumstances that shaped a person’s current state. This approach is particularly impactful for exploring complex issues like intergenerational trauma, systemic barriers, or sensitive experiences rooted in history.

What is Backwards Journey Mapping?

Backwards journey mapping starts at the present moment and works backwards, uncovering the paths and patterns that led to today. It’s not just about solving immediate problems—it’s about understanding the “why” behind them. By digging into historical and contextual factors, teams gain richer insights into user needs and systemic influences.

Why Historical Context Matters

Context of use and building contextual intelligence is critical in all UX or Inclusive Service Design work. It’s all about understanding historical context and it’s impact on attitudes and user adoption.

1. Acknowledges lived experience: Backwards journeys validate users’ stories by spotlighting the events that shaped their reality.
2. Reveals root causes: Many challenges, like mistrust in systems or barriers to access, stem from historical injustices. Backwards mapping helps uncover these roots.
3. Builds empathy: Exploring historical trauma or intergenerational patterns fosters a deeper understanding of user pain points.
4. Informs systemic solutions: By identifying long-standing patterns, teams can design interventions that tackle not just symptoms but underlying causes.

In this example of the Black Housing Journey, we go back to government policies and legislation that deliberately created blockers to accessing housing: laws, financing, roads, and societal discrimination. This wide lens goes back to the orgins of slavery to fully appreciate cross-generational exclusion. Making it concrete: Banks and Credit Unions in the US, including Colorado governors, in 2021 started shaped new products and services to address this opportunity.

How to Create a Historic or Backward Journey

1. Start with the present: Define the current state of the user, system, or problem. Surface the symptoms.
2. Map key moments: Identify pivotal events, decisions, or shifts contributing to this state.
3. Explore lived experiences: Incorporate user interviews, historical data, or community insights to add depth. Lean on Subject Matter Experts such as community leaders, activists, historians, librarians or journalists.
4. Analyze patterns: Look for recurring themes, barriers, or triggers that need addressing. Identify historical triggers or root causes of current pain points.

Mapping journeys tied to trauma or sensitive topics requires care.

• Collaborate with users: Invite them to share their perspectives when they feel ready.
• Focus on trust: Create a safe space where participants feel heard and respected.
• Be culturally aware: Understand historical injustices or cultural trauma to avoid retraumatization.

Timframes for your backward journey:

The timeframe can take a 20-50 year lens or, in an impacted community view, a 100-200 year lens. For example, to understand how attitudes to disability have shifted, you might rewind to 2006 when the UN adopted a social model of disability, moving away from a physical view of societal barriers. You might frame that journey as “Our Customers aren’t disabled; the world (our designs) create the access barriers.” You might also go back to Victorian attitudes toward disability to add some wider context.

Key Points- Look Backward: Rewind your vision

Backwards journey mapping offers a powerful lens to explore how history, systems, and individual or community experiences intersect. It empowers teams to move beyond surface-level fixes and develop solutions that honor the complexity of human lives. When done thoughtfully, it bridges the gap between past challenges and future opportunities, building designs that are more inclusive, carefully tuned and impactful.