Empathy Maps

Empathy maps are created for two main reasons:

• As a way to deepen understanding of a user or persona

• As a way to communicate our discoveries to others

While we can't literally "walk a mile in their shoes", we can empathize with our users to identify their pain points and (hopefully) gain insight on how to solve them.

As their name suggests, empathy maps simply help us build empathy with our end users. When based on real data and when combined with other mapping methods, they can:

• Remove bias from our designs and align the team on a single, shared understanding of the user
• Discover weaknesses in our research
• Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not even be aware of
• Understand what drives users’ behaviors
• Guide us towards meaningful innovation

— Sarah Gibbons (Nielsen Norman Group), "Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking"

Making an empathy map with personas

Choose a subject

Get in the mindset of your users. You may focus on a single user or an aggregate of multiple users, but it is typically best to work with one of your personas to further your understanding of their wants, needs, and fears.

Create categories

Your empathy map should include at least 4 sections. Commonly, these include what the user says, thinks, does, and feels, but you can adjust yours if needed. Some templates expand these sections into subsections or add other features, such as what the user hears from those around them.

The XPLANE Empathy Map Canvas breaks their categories into 7 sections with questions as prompts in each area. It's available as a free template or printable to use in your own exercises.

Choose a task

What do you want to measure? This can be a small or large goal. Empathy maps can be general or task-oriented depending on your needs. Consider the problem your app is trying to solve.

Empathize with your persona

Try to take on the mindset of your persona and pretend that you are performing the specified task. Which areas would you find frustrating? What might you hear from your peers or social group? What assumptions do you have about how things "should" work?

Creating virtual "sticky notes" is an easy way to record many thoughts, then sort through them. Trying to categorize thoughts right away may feel overwhelming: is a note a thought or a feeling? We do not need to be precise with this exercise; just thorough.

Some of these quadrants may seem ambiguous or overlapping — for example, it may be difficult to distinguish between Thinks and Feels. Do not focus too much on being precise: if an item may fit into multiple quadrants, just pick one. The 4 quadrants exist only to push our knowledge about users and to ensure we don’t leave out any important dimension

— Sarah Gibbons (Nielsen Norman Group), "Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking"

Example

This empathy map is designed for a hypothetical app that makes finding healthcare easier. On the left side of the diagram, the task is displayed in large letters and a shortened persona is underneath. Data points are organized by category, and all of the categories are color-coded (much easier when working digital-only!).

This example was created in FigJam using a photograph from Christopher Campbell via Unsplash.

Making an empathy map with real users

As you observe your user perform specific tasks, make notes on what they say and do. Sticky notes work well for this and can be assembled into a larger grid after the observation is complete. Your observation can be performed "live" at the time of testing or distilled later from interview or video recordings.

Alternatively, your user can take notes on their own thoughts and fears and reveal information that would otherwise be missed. As a tester, it's hard to capture all of the emotions and fleeting thoughts going through our heads as we perform tasks.