Empathy Map
To understand your users and visualize the way they feel, think, say and do things to reach their goal.
- Steps
- 3
- Last edited
- Jan 8, 2025
- Created by
- Nova
About this process
The popular empathy map tool is a collaborative and visual way to illustrate what a user thinks, feels, says and does. This tool externalizes the knowledge about users in order to create a shared understanding of their needs and provides information to help decision-makers.
The process in detail
3 steps- 1
Define your customer / persona
- 2
Find information about your customer
- 3
Evaluate your target on the empathy map board
Read the full text
1. Define your customer / persona
Make sure you have a persona in mind before starting this exercise. If you don't yet have one, create one using our "Personas" tool, or have a pre-defined persona in mind. You may add a link to the persona on the board.
Before proceeding, you should know basic information about the target: such as Age, Sex, Lifestyle, Hobbies, Status, Education, Location, Interest, Groups, etc. You should also know key characteristics that will differentiate your user from other people/users.
Make sure everyone understands who they are before you start building the empathy map.
👉You can add basic things here: Profile, Job to be done, Pain points, etc.
👇🙉🙊🙈But let's go over the details.
2. Find information about your customer
Start by finding information online (the easiest way to gather data quickly). Write down a number of places where your customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data.
Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. These pages are often excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel.
💥Note: Doing some research before you open the board and discuss this session further with your team can facilitate the process.
3. Evaluate your target on the empathy map board
An empathy map is an easy and visual matrix that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviors and attitudes. It is a useful tool to help teams better understand their users and to evaluate information during interviews.
Empathy maps have four elements:
Consider personal connections with family, friends, and coworkers along with what is being said in the media by bloggers, social media influencers, and experts in fields.
- Start typing here...
- Demographics and other details that are unique to this segment our user type
- The theory is based on the notion that people buy products and services to get a “job” done. When [situation] I want to [motivation or forces] so I can [expected and desired outcome]
- Pain points refer to specific issues encountered by customers, both existing and potential, within the business environment.
- User needs are the specific requirements and expectations of users that a product or service should fulfill to provide value and enhance their experience
- Who? What? When? ...Would their buying or any other behaviour will be influence by [something or someone]?