Opportunity Mapping 🗺️ Prompts

Purpose: Opportunity Mapping helps teams align on what problem to solve by surfacing and framing user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.

Design Thinking Phase: Define

Time: 45–60 min session + 1–2 hours analysis

Difficulty: ⭐⭐

When to use:When stakeholder goals clash or lack prioritisationWhen discovery research unearthed many valuable but divergent insightsWhen teams default to solution-first thinking without a clear problem

What it is

Opportunity Mapping is a visual and collaborative problem-framing technique. It lays out user needs, business drivers, and technical constraints to help multidisciplinary teams spot the best-aligning opportunities. It’s often used post-research to synthesise insights and structure thinking around "where to focus."

Why it matters

Without framing the right problem, design solutions often miss the mark—even if beautifully executed. Opportunity Mapping connects the dots between user motivation, organisational value, and feasibility. It prevents blind ideation by ensuring everyone works from a common understanding of where value lives.

When to use

• After key user interviews or observational research
• Before a roadmap planning session or sprint goal-setting
• During cross-functional alignment workshops where priorities feel fuzzy

Benefits

• Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
• Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
• User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.

How to use it

Here’s a simple 5-step flow to run an Opportunity Mapping session with your team:

1. Define the Goal: Start with a clear problem area or design challenge (e.g. “improve onboarding for small business customers”).
2. Gather Inputs: Pull in research insights, customer quotes, business objectives, KPIs, technical direction, and known assumptions.
3. Map Aspects Separately: Create three zones: User Needs, Business Goals, and Technical Constraints. Use sticky notes digitally or physically under each category.
4. Find Overlaps: Identify areas where user needs intersect with business value and are technically feasible. These become candidate opportunities.
5. Refine and Prioritise: Turn overlaps into How Might We… questions. Rank based on impact, effort, or alignment via a team rating exercise.

Example Output

Let’s say you’re working on a mobile banking app for freelancers. Through mapping, the overlap you identified was:

• User Need: Understand quarterly tax and invoice obligations
• Business Goal: Drive daily app engagement
• Opportunity Framed: “How might we help freelancers track estimated tax and payments in a simple, non-technical way?”

This opportunity can now guide design sprints and idea generation with sharper focus.

Common Pitfalls

• Jumping to Ideas Too Fast: Teams often leap to solutions without fully mapping all factors. Keep the focus on framing, not fixing.
• Overloading One Axis: If the User Needs area has 30 stickies and Business Goals has 5, your prioritisation will be skewed. Balance inputs across all areas.
• Lack of Synthesis: Dumping research without clustering thematically dilutes value. Group and reframe before inserting into the map.

10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for Opportunity Mapping – UX/UI Edition

How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)

Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.

C.S.I.R. stands for:

• Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
• Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
• Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
• Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)

Level up your career with smarter AI prompts.Get templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.

Prompt Template 1: “Generate Opportunity Areas from Research Synthesis”

Generate Opportunity Areas from Research Synthesis

Context: You are a UX Lead wrapping up a discovery phase for a [B2C mobile product].  
Specific Info: The research includes survey results, 10 user interviews, and analytics trends across onboarding and feature usage.  
Intent: Identify three problem opportunity areas where user pain overlaps with product or business priorities.  
Response Format: Return a table with three columns: (1) Observed Insight, (2) Opportunity Framed as “How Might We,” and (3) Affected Persona Segment.

If insights seem surface-level, ask for deeper behavioural patterns.  
Propose a next-step framing exercise to prioritise between these mapped opportunities.

Prompt Template 2: “Cluster Raw Research Notes into Framing Themes”

Cluster Raw Research Notes into Framing Themes

Context: You are a UX Researcher analysing open-ended survey responses and interview transcripts from [recent usability tests].  
Specific Info: The project investigates user trust during the [checkout flow] of an e-commerce app.  
Intent: Group input data into thematic categories that support problem framing.  
Response Format: Provide categories with sample quotes or behaviours under each. Highlight any emotional/motivational drivers.

If quotes are too vague, ask what emotional reactions are implied.  
Suggest a reframe of one theme into a HMW opportunity.

Prompt Template 3: “Map Feasibility Constraints as Design Variables”

Map Feasibility Constraints as Design Variables

Context: You’re a Product Designer collaborating with engineering on an MVP scope for a [self-service dashboard].  
Specific Info: The backlog has been groomed, and feasibility limits have been raised (e.g., no real-time calculations, limited API calls).  
Intent: Translate constraints into creative design framing, not just red lines.  
Response Format: Return a list of constraints, followed by design workarounds or simplification strategies.

If constraints conflict, call it out and offer tradeoff framing.  
Suggest ways to visualise feasibility vs. ambition for decision-making.

Prompt Template 4: “Turn Stakeholder Goals into Design Opportunity Inputs”

Turn Stakeholder Goals into Design Opportunity Inputs

Context: You’re a UX Strategist working toward alignment for an upcoming design sprint.  
Specific Info: Stakeholders each prioritised their goals (revenue, engagement, adoption, etc.).  
Intent: Translate strategic goals into usable inputs for opportunity mapping.  
Response Format: Rewrite goals as potential opportunity domains using plain user-focused language.

Ask for clarification if goals are too generic (e.g. "growth").  
Offer one example of a reframed strategic goal turned into a user-aligned prompt.

Prompt Template 5: “Draft a ‘How Might We’ Bank from Research Quotes”

Draft a ‘How Might We’ Bank from Research Quotes

Context: You're facilitating a UX workshop focused on reframing pain points into opportunities.  
Specific Info: You have 15 verbatim customer quotes, plus previous personas and journeys.  
Intent: Help the team translate raw feedback into actionable HMW questions.  
Response Format: List final quotes, inferred need, and an HMW framing for each.

Ask follow-up to verify user segment relevance.  
Suggest interactive ways teams can build on leading HMWs.

Prompt Template 6: “Prioritise Opportunity Areas Based on Strategic Fit”

Prioritise Opportunity Areas Based on Strategic Fit

Context: You are in a product trio (PM, design, tech) narrowing focus post-discovery.  
Specific Info: 7 opportunity themes have been identified.  
Intent: Score each against feasibility, business alignment, and user value.  
Response Format: Provide a prioritisation matrix with a scoring summary and top 3 recommendations.

Suggest questions to align perspective gaps before scoring.  
Recommend one visual format (e.g., Eisenhower matrix) for team discussion.

Prompt Template 7: “Extract Decision Points from Opportunity Statements”

Extract Decision Points from Opportunity Statements

Context: You are preparing for a design crit with multiple concepts from a recent ideation sprint.  
Specific Info: Each concept stems from an HMW from the opportunity map.  
Intent: Identify assumptions and points of divergence within each opportunity.  
Response Format: Return a breakdown of each opportunity’s branch points or "forks" and suggest how to test them.

Ask how many concepts exist per opportunity.  
Reflect on whether user validation is needed before or after backup paths are designed.

Prompt Template 8: “Summarise User Needs Per Persona as Framing Inputs”

Summarise User Needs Per Persona as Framing Inputs

Context: You’re preparing for a cross-functional HMW session.  
Specific Info: You’ve created 3 high-level personas from earlier empathy maps.  
Intent: Clarify each persona’s top 3 expressed or inferred needs for framing.  
Response Format: Provide a table with Persona, Need, and Quote/Signal.

Query for conflicts between persona needs if detected.  
Offer an idea for clustering opportunities across personas.

Prompt Template 9: “Facilitate Friction Mapping Across a User Flow”

Facilitate Friction Mapping Across a User Flow

Context: You are a UX Designer conducting a journey audit of a [multi-step sign-up process].  
Specific Info: Usability testing revealed drop-off after step 2 and confusion at step 4.  
Intent: Highlight friction points and link them to underlying need gaps.  
Response Format: Walk through each step with observed friction and associated HMW question.

Push for microcopy or UI affordance angles for improvement.  
Prompt follow-up brainstorming for quick win vs. long-term solutions.

Prompt Template 10: “Craft Workshop Agenda for Opportunity Mapping”

Craft Workshop Agenda for Opportunity Mapping

Context: You are planning a 90-minute virtual session to align product and design teams.  
Specific Info: There’s minimal prior mapping experience in the group.  
Intent: Build an inclusive, stepwise workshop agenda using Opportunity Mapping.  
Response Format: List agenda blocks with estimated time, objectives, and suggested tools (e.g. FigJam, Miro).

Suggest async preparation tasks or warm-up templates.  
Recommend post-workshop actions based on opportunity clustering.

Recommended Tools

• Miro or FigJam whiteboards with mapping templates
• UXPressia or Smaply for journey-based insight clustering
• ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for cross-referencing and reframing user quotes into design inputs

Learn More

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