What is an empathy map and how to create one
Understanding your users is key to creating better products and enhancing the customer experience. Designing for users helps you develop products centered around users’ needs, allowing you to tailor your product based on what users think, say, hear, feel, and do.
Empathy maps are one of several tools you can use to better understand who your customers are and what they’re looking for. You can use an empathy map to learn more about users and how they interact with your brand and product, and you can use that information during the decision-making process to create better products and a customer-centric experience.
Learn more about empathy maps and how empathy mapping can help you create the best user experience.
Try Confluence for help with creating effective empathy maps.
What is an empathy map?
An empathy map is a tool for visualizing your users’ attitudes. It typically looks like a square with the user in the middle. Four sections surround the user: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. We’ll examine these individual sections shortly.
Why are empathy maps important?
Empathy maps are an essential brainstorming tool because they allow you to visualize what you know about the people who use your products. From there, you can make customer-centric decisions about your brand, its products, and the customer experience you create.
Let’s say you’re developing a product or service. You want your products and services to be centered around your customers, and empathy maps are a simple way to make decisions based on them. Empathy maps also drive project collaboration by ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding the user experience.
Key components of an empathy map
An empathy map template can simplify the process of creating one. Let’s examine the four key components.
Says
For this section, you want to capture direct quotes from your customers and use those quotes to figure out how people feel, what they want in a product, and what kinds of challenges they face as a user.
Think about how customers’ input can drive product and service development. You can use this input to create customer-centric products and services that align with your project goals.
Thinks
Customers verbalize a lot of their feelings about products and brands, but that’s not always the case. For this section, you must consider the internal thoughts and concerns your users may not communicate clearly. Consider aspects like doubts, hopes, and expectations to better understand what customers think about your product or brand.
Does
This section focuses on customers' actions when they interact with your brand, products, or services. Track how people interact with your brand and how it contrasts or aligns with what they say about it.
Feels
People use logic to decide which products or services are right for them, but emotions play a role, too. In the Feels section, you want to capture users' emotions — from frustrations and fears to positive emotions. Think about how these emotions can influence user behaviors and decisions.
Benefits of an empathy map
Empathy maps are one of the most effective ways to visualize how customers think and feel to create a user-centric experience. You can use empathy maps to get a clear picture of how users interact with your products or services and use that information to drive the strategic planning process.
Empathy maps also help teams identify areas for improvement and prioritize user needs over internal decision-making. As a result, you can develop products and services that result in a more customer-focused user experience.
How to create an empathy map
Creating an empathy map is fairly straightforward, but it’s important to follow the right steps to get results. We’ll break down the empathy mapping process into steps to make it easier to start.
Define target audience
Before creating an empathy map, you must define your target audience. Your target audience is the people you will analyze through your empathy map, so choosing the right user personas or customer groups is essential. Your goal here is to learn more about a particular target audience, including their needs and pain points.
You can use our user persona template to streamline the process of creating user personas for your empathy map.
Gather research
Once you’ve defined your target audience, it’s time to gather the data you need to fill out your empathy map. You can collect this data from various sources, including user interviews, surveys, reviews, and behavioral observations. The goal here is to collect measurable data that you can use to learn more about your users and how they interact with your products or services.
Fill in each section
Now that you’ve got a clearly defined target audience and collected data about them, you can start completing each section of your empathy map. Start by organizing the data you’ve collected into one of the four categories — Says, Thinks, Does, or Feels — then add each item to the appropriate section on your map.
This is a stage where brainstorming with Confluence whiteboards comes in handy. Multiple team members can collaborate and brainstorm on the same empathy map to ensure all the data is where it belongs.
Identify pain points and needs
Empathy maps are designed to give you deeper insights into how users feel about and interact with your products or services. Once you have each section filled out, you can start looking for common threads in user feedback and behavior to identify pain points and needs. Look for common complaints or behaviors that indicate user frustration.
Once you understand user pain points, you can use that information in the project planning and product development processes. For example, you can tailor your products or services to address common pain points and needs.
Review and discuss
After you finish creating your empathy map, review it and discuss your findings with other team members. Then, figure out how you can use the knowledge you gained to inform future decisions and strategies, including product and service development. This is key to using your empathy map to your full advantage.
It’s also important to ensure everyone is on the same page at this stage. Reviewing your empathy map as a team allows team members to ask questions and become familiar with everything.
Best practices for using empathy maps
The effort you put into creating an empathy map significantly impacts the results you get. Let’s look at some of the best practices for using empathy maps to ensure you create a user-centric experience.
Collaboration is essential when using an empathy map. Everyone has something different to add when interpreting user feedback and behavior, so collaborating as a team makes it easier to get more from your empathy map. Collaboration also helps you keep your empathy map up to date over time.
Empathy maps aren’t a concrete visual tool you can create and forget about. Your empathy maps should be flexible, meaning you must revisit and update them regularly. User behavior, feelings, and feedback change over time, so your empathy map should evolve along with your target audience.
Empathy map example
Let’s examine an empathy map example to better understand what empathy maps are and how to create your own.
Your user is at the center of your empathy map, surrounded by the four categories:
Says
Users might say some of these things about your product:
- It’s easy to use
- That feature is useful
- The buttons are too small
Thinks
Users’ thoughts about your product might include:
- The ads are distracting
- Other similar products are faster
Does
User actions can help you learn more about how people use your products:
- Users frequently share with others
- Users complete processes from start to finish
- Users spend extensive time using your product
Feels
Finally, you have to consider how users feel when using your product:
- Excitement
- Confusion
- Focus
You can use this information to eliminate pain points and focus on customer needs, creating a product that generates positive user feelings, behavior, and feedback.
Use Confluence whiteboards for effective empathy mapping
An empathy map is an excellent way to create a user-centric experience, but making one can be a bit confusing. If your goal is easy and effective empathy mapping, Confluence whiteboards can help. You can improve project collaboration with Confluence whiteboards by allowing everyone to collaborate on the same project in real-time.
Confluence is a connected workspace where teams can create, edit, organize, and share their work. With your empathy map, you can get everyone on the same page no matter what team or project they’re working on.
Try Confluence whiteboards and discover how a shared workspace can empower your organization and get everyone on the same page.