Whether you are a user researcher, a marketer or a product manager, empathy is the key to understanding your customers and their needs. You have to be able to look at the world through your consumer’s eyes in order to be able to design and execute products best designed for them. One of the widely used templates for practicing empathy in user research is the empathy map. 

What is an empathy map?

Empathy mapping is a visual representation of your audience's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is a powerful tool that helps individuals and organizations step into the shoes of their target audience, gain valuable insights into their needs, desires, and pain points. 

Usually, an empathy map consists of four areas – a) Think and Feel, b) Hear, c) See, and d) Say and Do. Some variations of the empathy map also add e) Pains, and f) Gains. 

As part of the user experience, empathy maps cover both environmental factors (such as hear and see) and individual factors (such as think, feel and do).

Why should I use an empathy map?

An empathy map can help you to pin down and structure certain insights and inferences from your research to better empathize with your users. 

An empathy map provides much more than basic demographic information about the user, and takes a shot at better understanding a user’s behaviour, environment, aspirations and concerns. 

How do I use an empathy map?

You can start by drawing out an empathy map on a piece of paper or a board (p.s. there are tons of templates available online that you can get a printout of and use). If you prefer using a digital empathy map, platforms like Miro, and Mural are excellent for starting out. 

We have listed below a few ways you can start thinking about filling each of the quadrants.

1. Think and Feel: This quadrant will help you understand in depth your users’ beliefs and emotions associated with the product. Describe your users’ thoughts and emotions. Think more about what this says about their motivations, desires and beliefs?
2. Hear: What have they been hearing about the product from people, media, personal influencers, online networks?
3. See: What does your user see in their immediate surroundings? What do they see others doing/using?
4. Say & Do: This can include direct quotes and keywords that you user used, along with some of their actions and behaviours related to the topic of research. 
5. Pains: What are the users’ painpoints and fears? What are some challenges and doubts they have?
6. Gains: What is something that will benefit them from the product? What do users hope to achieve?

By the end of this exercise, you will have built a holistic picture of your user that is simultaneously humanistic and insightful. This is possible because, unlike a journey map, an empathy map puts the individual front and center in any line of questioning.

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Cover photo Igor Korzh

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