How to create an Empathy Map

Empathy maps are a design thinking methodology and design research tool that expand on User Personas by visualizing what they say, think, feel and do and help in the construction of Customer Journey Maps (i.e. Journey Maps) and Service Blueprints.

Empathy maps are centered around Personas and have four quadrants: Says, Thinks, Feels and Does.

Before creating an empathy map, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the quadrants.

In order to create an empathy map you must define the problem that you are trying to solve or the idea that you want to validate.

Please note that this hypothesis could relate to an existing feature, product, service or experience and could pertain to an entirely new creation or an addition to an existing creation.

Empathy maps are intended to help you gather an in-depth understanding of how a member of your target audience says, thinks, does and feels about a product, service or experience service and the story that unravels around it.

In order to know who to map, you must define your target audience.

Perform user research, desk research and carry out interviews.

Before you interview the individuals make sure to keep in mind that you will create personas for each of them and that you will map the things they say, do, think and feel into a shared structure to be able to draw common conclusions and insights that belong to the target audience when using your product, service or experience.

We strongly recommend that you interview the user about the jobs that they do in relation to the field that you are seeking to bring a product, service or experience to. These jobs may reveal gaps in the market that could be fulfilled by your business as a means to enhancing the lives of the users.

To learn more consult the Harvard Business School article linked below.

To remind yourself of what the quadrants mean consult the link below.

Using the research from Step Three, create personas and an empathy map for each persona.

You may also want to create a Journey Map or a Service Blueprint.

Use the empathy map to create a SWOT Analysis (i.e. identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and brainstorm features, products, services or experiences to prototype and test that result in a return on investment by enhancing the life of your target audience.

Additionally, we recommend that you consult our Methods for Synthesizing User Research article linked below to learn about design thinking products that could come out of the research that you have conducted.

These products are created using popular design research methodologies which are intended to help you and your organization innovate effectively.

When creating an empathy map, it is important to note that they are neither a start nor an end.

Empathy maps should serve as a means to learn more about your target audience, your product, service or experience (i.e. the creation), what works and what does not and should ultimately help refine the hypothesis or the creation as you progress.

It is more than likely that if you transform your target audience's life that the empathy map will change.

This is the result you're looking for and will likely mean that you will have to update the empathy map to reflect new requirements when the time comes, with the vision of further enhancing the lives of your target audience.

Empathy maps are also capable of demonstrating that you should not pursue a feature or a product, service or experience - and that's OK.

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