Understand the Present, Design the Future: A Journey Mapping Workshop

Designing for the future starts with understanding the present. For millions of people, that means navigating public services that were not built with their needs in mind.

Journey mapping is a human-centered design tool that helps teams understand what people experience before, during, and after interacting with a service. It captures not only the steps in a process, but also the emotions, barriers, workarounds, and moments of clarity along the way. The result is a shared understanding of where systems break down and where meaningful change can begin.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn the fundamentals of journey mapping and explore how it can improve customer experience, build empathy, and uncover opportunities for change. Civilla designers will share examples from real projects with public-serving institutions, highlighting how journey maps help teams better understand the people they serve and align around action.

Participants will then work together to create their own journey maps, applying the tool to a real-world service and identifying opportunities to make that experience more human.

Whether you work in government, a nonprofit, technology, design, or community engagement, this workshop will give you a practical human-centered design tool for understanding people more deeply and improving the systems they rely on.

No prior design experience required.

UN SUSTAINABILITY GOALS

We use Detroit's UNESCO City of Design designation as a call to action for Detroiters to embrace the Sustainable Development Goals in their own communities, contributing to the active effort of solving global interconnected issues.