Empathy Mapping
What is Empathy Mapping?
Empathy mapping is a simple but powerful tool that helps you understand your users better by organizing what you know about them into four key areas: what they say, what they think, what they do, and what they feel.
Think of it as a way to get inside your users' heads and hearts. Instead of just knowing facts about them, empathy mapping helps you understand their motivations, frustrations, and the context that shapes their behavior.
The goal isn't to create a perfect psychological profile, but to develop a shared understanding of your users that helps your team make better design decisions.
How Empathy Mapping Works
An empathy map is typically divided into four quadrants that capture different aspects of the user experience:
Says includes direct quotes and key phrases from user interviews, surveys, or other research. These are the things users actually tell you.
Thinks captures what users might be thinking but not saying out loud. This includes their internal monologue, concerns, and unspoken motivations.
Does documents the actions and behaviors you observe. This includes how users actually behave, not just how they say they behave.
Feels explores the emotional side of the user experience. What emotions do users experience? What are their hopes, fears, and frustrations?
Why Empathy Mapping Matters
Empathy mapping helps you move beyond surface-level understanding to develop genuine empathy for your users:
It builds team alignment by creating a shared understanding of who your users are and what they need.
It reveals insights that might not be obvious from individual pieces of research. When you see all the information together, patterns and contradictions become clear.
It humanizes your data by transforming abstract research findings into relatable, concrete information about real people.
It guides decision-making by giving you a clear reference point for evaluating design options and features.
It identifies opportunities by highlighting unmet needs and pain points that your product could address.
Creating an Empathy Map
The process of creating an empathy map is straightforward:
Start with research. Gather information from user interviews, observations, surveys, and other research activities. The more data you have, the richer your empathy map will be.
Set up your map. Create four quadrants on a whiteboard, piece of paper, or digital tool. You can also add sections for pain points and gains if they're relevant.
Fill in each quadrant. Use sticky notes or digital equivalents to capture insights. Don't worry about being perfect, just get the information down.
Look for patterns. Analyze what you've captured and look for connections, contradictions, and gaps in your understanding.
Synthesize insights. Summarize the key takeaways and what they mean for your design decisions.
Share with your team. Make sure everyone has access to the empathy map and understands what it represents.
What Goes Into Each Quadrant
Says might include quotes like "I just want this to work quickly" or "I don't understand why this is so complicated."
Thinks could include thoughts like "I hope this doesn't take too long" or "I'm worried about making a mistake."
Does might document behaviors like "clicks around randomly when confused" or "always checks reviews before buying."
Feels could capture emotions like "frustrated when things don't work as expected" or "excited when they find what they're looking for."
When to Use Empathy Mapping
Empathy mapping is particularly valuable in these situations:
Early in the design process when you're trying to understand who your users are and what they need.
After conducting user research to synthesize and organize your findings in a meaningful way.
When aligning your team around a shared understanding of your users.
When revisiting existing products to identify opportunities for improvement.
During ideation sessions to keep your solutions focused on real user needs.
Common Empathy Mapping Mistakes
Making assumptions instead of basing the map on actual research data.
Focusing only on what users say and ignoring what they actually do.
Creating maps that are too generic and don't capture the specific context of your users.
Not involving the whole team in the mapping process, which reduces buy-in and shared understanding.
Letting the map become outdated instead of updating it as you learn more about your users.
Variations and Adaptations
You can adapt empathy mapping to fit your specific needs:
Persona-based maps focus on specific user personas rather than individual users.
Journey-based maps explore empathy at specific touchpoints along the user journey.
Simplified maps focus on just the most important aspects when time or resources are limited.
Remote mapping uses digital tools to enable distributed teams to collaborate on empathy maps.
Getting Started with Empathy Mapping
If you're new to empathy mapping, start simple:
Pick one user type that's important to your product and focus on them.
Gather your research from interviews, observations, or other sources.
Set aside an hour with your team to create the map together.
Use sticky notes to capture insights and make it easy to move things around.
Don't overthink it. The goal is to organize what you know, not to create a perfect psychological profile.
Use the map to guide your design decisions and refer back to it regularly.
Remember, empathy mapping is a tool for understanding, not an end in itself. The real value comes from how you use the insights to create better experiences for your users.