27 Jun Empathy Map
Empathy maps assist designers and analysts to understand the pains and gains experienced by end users. The map highlights key insights derived from user research. The intent is to encourage empathy for targeted user groups. An empathy map should serve to align your users and customers directly to the success criteria defined for your initiatives.
WHEN TO USE
HCD Process Phase: Ideation
BABOK Knowledge Area: Elicitation and Collaboration
PMI-BA Domain: Analysis
OVERVIEW
Empathy maps knock away the use of job titles or organizational roles or customer segmentations as stand-ins for real users and customers. They bring attention back to the motivations, obstacles, goals, tasks, and ideas of users – as expressed by the users themselves.
These maps collapse abstract and presumed ideas of user needs and aim to build up a fully realized model of a targeted user.
Empathy maps are completed collaboratively by a project team and/or the very people impacted by your activities. The optimal approach depends on the context of the mapping process and the intended usage of the resulting map.
Basic Empathy Map via NNGroup.
BASIC STEPS
1. Complete your research processes
The better your research the better your empathy map. Engage with people through observation, interviews, workshops – whatever activity gets you as face-to-face as possible with the people needed to inform the work you are doing.
Secondary research such as content analysis is useful, but only if this analysis is based on first-hand accounts from the users (i.e. interview transcripts).
Remember – Empathy equals people. If you are not empathy-focused aka people-focused in your research, your resulting empathy map will be absent of empathy and carry little to no observable value.
2. Determine your map approach
There are various templates you can use to draw your empathy map. At a minimum, your empathy map should include:
- four (4) quadrants representing representing the following,
- says – do you have pull quotes or defining words or terms your user said? (*using the words of your users is very powerful)
- do – what behaviours or actions did you observe?
- think – did you capture their beliefs and values? can you derive their thinking patterns?
- feel – what emotions did the user display and when?
- a circle (or whatever shape you want) in the centre to represent the user(s).
- a column labeled “Pains”(problems) and another labeled “Gains” (wins). Here you capture the problems the user(s) experience and the potential wins they could experience when the problems are addressed.
What type of template you use and how you render it is up to you.
Example of a graphical empathy map via UX Knowledgebase
3. Plan an empathy mapping session
You could construct an empathy map on your own, though they are significantly richer in collaboration.
Determine if you’re going to construct an empathy map using personas or with actual users.
- For larger or distributed projects, you will likely start with personas. Choose those best representing your targeted users and go from there.
- For smaller or localized projects, you can bring together a group of real targeted users. This approach provides an opportunity for you to observe how different users interact with each other. Such interactions can provide additional depth and resonance to your research and your empathy map.
4. Hold the empathy map session
The session can go as long or as short as needed. Start with introductory walkthrough of the process and the map template.
You can time-box the activity but be flexible.
Hold your session in a neutral and comfortable environment. Be creative in your execution as to encourage a welcoming and inclusive experience.
5. Review mapping results
Review the session and the map. What insights does the map reveal? Are there gaps in the team’s knowledge? Are there users or experiences missing from the research?
Discuss as a group what was learned and what wasn’t learned. Determine your next steps.
SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT