Create a Customer Empathy

Map in 6 Easy Steps!

Identifying who your customers are is great for your business, but it’s only the first
step. To ensure that all marketing campaigns and materials you create will resonate
with your target audience, you need to also know your ideal customer’s environment,
who they are influenced by, what their pain points are, and their goals and
challenges.

Any good product, service or design is only good if it

matches what a customer desires in the product.
This overwhelming collection of information can be easily organized with Empathy
Maps. Going further than just creating a persona for your ideal customer, will help:

1. to get a complete analysis of your targeted audience in a broader scale

2. to align your campaigns and strategies with your products and services and your
ideal customer
3. to get a better understanding of which channels to focus on for a rewarding result
4. having a visual representation will help you and your team understand what really
matters
 What is a Customer Empathy Map?

Empathy maps are a gathering of information that depicts your ideal customer. As
your team starts to gather data, it is important to know the difference between
empathy and sympathy. Although the two words sound the same, they mean two
different things. Empathy is when you feel and understand someone’s feelings,
attitude, and experiences. It is the understanding of other’s experiences with
everyday life events. Sympathy is related to feeling sorry for another person’s grief
and troubles.

This map can come in various shapes and colors. Sticky notes are a common tool
used, as it simplifies complicated data and can be color coded for better organization.
But no matter what information is collected, the targeted audience is always placed
in the center surrounded by 6 different components:

1. How the customer thinks and feels

2. What the customer hears
3. What the customer sees
4. What the customer says and does
5. The customer’s pain
6. The customer’s gain

We’ve created a template for you in Conceptboard so that you can work on empathy
maps remotely with any of your teammates. Grab a copy at the bottom!

How your customer thinks and feels

This section mainly focuses on the customer’s feelings which will give you a better
idea of who your target audience is. Ask your team to find answers to what really
matters to the customer, what their concerns are, how they react to certain things, if
they are happy with your service or product, etc… Try to see from the perspective of
the customer, and figure out what emotions they associate with your product.

What do your customers hear?

This section focuses solely on what or who influences your targeted audience. Do
they listen more to familiar people that surround them like family and friends, or are
they more persuaded by coworkers or strictly business related people.

It also focuses on how they get their information, through what means or channels.
When collecting information on your customer, make sure to find these answers as it
will give you a better idea on how your customer makes a decision.

What does your customer see?

Within this part of your map, you will get a better understanding of the environment
of your customer. How they respond in private and public situations, if they respond
differently or the same? Here, you can also ask your team to get more details on
what your ideal customer is exposed to on a daily basis, what exactly is in their
environment, and the problems that they are facing.

What does your ideal customer say and do?

In this section, you will find all your answers to what your customer says to others,
and their actions following these conversations. From there, you will be able to
further understand if their words match their actions and what really matters to
them. Place direct customer quotes in this section, and gather information on who
your customer influences to have a better idea of your possible wider audiences.

What are your customer’s pains and gains?

You can choose to include these two lasts sections in your maps, the pains and
gains of your customer. The Pains should include their fears, frustrations, and the
obstacles they need to overcome. This section will include information as to why they
are not able to reach their wants.

In the Gains section, you can find all information regarding the targeted customer’s
success, and how they obtained it. This will also include their goals, wants, and
needs; what exactly makes them happy on an everyday basis.
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by Nick BabichP O ST ED O N 0 2 - 0 9 - 2 0 1 8

Adobe Products in this article

Having a good understanding of the people you design for is essential if you want to build a
successful product. While designers have many techniques that help them develop this
understanding, there’s one key technique with a lot of advantages called empathy mapping.

As the name suggests, empathy maps help product teams build empathy with their end users.
It gets team members thinking from a user-centered perspective and helps them understand
what design really is.

In this article, I’ll define what empathy maps are and share 10 practical tips to help you
develop better empathy maps.

What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to identify and understand another person’s situation and feelings. We
often hear the word ’empathy’ used as a synonym to ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’
Empathy is a core skill for designers because it allows them to identify with users and adopt
their perspectives.

What is an empathy map?

An empathy map is a visualization tool used to articulate what a product team knows about a
user. This tool helps product teams build a broader understanding of the ‘why’ behind user
needs and wants. This tool forces product teams to shift focus from the product they want to
build, to the people who will use this product. As a team identifies what they know about the
user and places this information on a chart, they gain a more holistic view of the user’s world
and his or her problems, or opportunity space.

An empathy map describes whats the user says, thinks, does, and feels.

Empathy maps vary in shapes and sizes. A typical empathy map includes four quadrants:
  Say – What the user says about the product. Ideally, this section contains real quotes from
users recorded during interviews or usability testing sessions.
 Think – What the user is thinking about when interacting with a product. What occupies the
user’s thoughts? What matters to the user?
 Feel – This section contains information about the user’s emotional state. What worries the
user? What does the user get excited about? How does the user feel about the experience?
 Do – What actions does the user take? What actions and behaviors did you notice?

While the empathy map described above is useful during initial analysis, it’s a bit too generic
for brainstorming sessions focused on user experience design. In the attempt to make
empathy maps more specific to UX design, Paul Boag proposed a format that is much more
useful for product design. The map contains a different set of categories:

 Feelings – How is the user is feeling about the experience? What matters to him or her?
 Tasks – What tasks are users trying to complete?
 Influences – What people, things, or places may influence how the user acts?
 Pain points – What pain points might the user be experiencing that they hope to overcome?
What are their fears, frustrations, and anxieties?
 Goals – What is the user’s ultimate goal? What are they trying to achieve?
 Empathy maps can be used to visualize what we know about a persona in an organized way.
Credited to Paul Boag

When to use empathy maps

In the UX design process, empathy maps are best used from the very beginning of the process.
Ideally, they should be created right after initial user research is done. In that case, they’ll
have a substantial impact on product requirements and help product teams develop a
meaningful value proposition.

Five things to do before the session

1. Define your primary purpose for empathy mapping

Before creating an empathy map, you should have a clear understanding of why you need to
do one. There are two typical cases where you need to create a map: for general
understanding of your users, or for understanding a specific task or situation. For example, if
you want to understand a particular user’s behavior ━ e.g. a certain kind of buyingrdecision
━ you’ll need to create a task-based empathy map, or an empathy map based on a single
decision.

2. Conduct research

The best empathy maps are drawn from real data. Gather reports from user interviews, diary
studies, or qualitative surveys, and ask each team member who will participate in empathy
mapping to read through the research individually prior to the session. Once all team
members are familiar with the research data, you can proceed to mapping.

Tip: The most valuable ideas usually come from time spent listening to users. Start your
project by interviewing and observing current and potential users to understand their pain
points and aspirations better.

3. Don’t do it alone

While it’s possible to create an empathy map alone, it’s better to do it in a team. Design is a
team sport, and it’s essential that each team member thinks about the user when crafting a
product. Creating empathy maps is a great team exercise that makes team members gather
together and synthesize information about users. Invite all core product team members ━
product manager, designers, developers, marketers ━ to the session.

Tip: Invite stakeholders to the session too. Having stakeholders there during mapping
sessions is beneficial for two reasons. Firstly, it’s possible to create richer empathy maps by
balancing stakeholders’ goals and users’ needs. Secondly, it’s possible to ensure that the
product team and stakeholders are on the same page.

4. Make sure you will have enough time for the session

While the actual session shouldn’t take too long ━ usually about 30-60 minutes ━ it’s better
to give yourself extra time and book a room for an additional 30 minutes. You’ll need 15
minutes before the session to make sure that place is ready with materials such as a
whiteboard, sticky notes, and markers, and you’ll need 15 minutes after the session to
summarize all the findings.

Tip: Print out any project relevant information that can serve as cues during the session.
Having this information printed will prevent team members from using digital devices during
the meeting.

5. Invite an experienced moderator to the session

A moderator is a person responsible for working with a team. The role of a moderator
consists of asking questions that will make team members brainstorm user characteristics. An
experienced moderator is a person who:

 Doesn’t ask leading questions. Leading questions are questions that frame the participant’s
mind around a particular answer. This often happens when a part of the answer is
accidentally contained in the moderator’s question or the moderator subconsciously directs
the participant to answer in a certain way by inserting their own opinion into the questions
they’re asking.
 Doesn’t express their own opinion. Moderators should always control their reactions.
 Makes sure everyone participates in the activity.

Five things to do during and after the session

1. Always do one-to-one mapping

Follow the rule ‘one persona per map.’ This means, if you have multiple personas, there
should be an empathy map for each. Mixing different personas in one map won’t give you
valuable insights.

2. Create context

Start by defining who will be the subject of the empathy map, or persona, and what they’ll do,
or the goal they want to achieve. It’s worth mentioning a location the subject is located in
when trying to accomplish that goal; for example, a tourist at the airport trying to order a taxi
using a mobile app. The point of creating context is to make sure the team understands and
empathizes with the subject’s situation
3. Add the basic characteristics of the persona

Before you start asking questions, it’s essential to ensure the team is ready to morph into their
user persona. Here are a few simple tricks that will help you get your team into the mood:

 Give a persona a name and a job title.

 Fill in some personal details. You might want to draw eyes, a mouth, a nose, ears, or a
hairstyle to differentiate the persona from other profiles.

These simple details will help you make the persona feel more real.

4. Encourage team members to talk about their thoughts

After you define the essential characteristics of a persona, it’s time for the main session. The
team brainstorms user characteristics by answering questions like “what are the user’s pain
points when using a product?” Each team member should write their responses on post-it
notes and stick them to the map. It’s essential to have the team members talk about their
sticky notes as they place them on the empathy map. By asking questions, it’s possible to
reach more profound insights ━ such as why team members really think the way they do ━
which can be valuable for the rest of the team.

Tip: Instead of writing directly on the map, use post-it notes and stick them in sections. Sticky
notes can be easily removed, changed, or grouped. This will help you move insights around
and cluster similar notes together that belong to the same quadrant. It’s also better to use
colored post-it notes and assign a color to each team member. This will help improve the
process and the results of mapping.

Empathy maps developed during design thinking sessions. Participants placed sticky notes with ideas
about the user onto the respective section of the empathy map. Credited to IBM
5. Summarize the results

At the end of the session, review the completed empathy map and discuss any patterns.
Encourage team members to share their thoughts about the session. Ask them what new
insights they learned that will help them during product development or what hypotheses they
have about the users they’d like to validate. Once you collect all the information, organize it
into a summary and share it with team members.

Things to do after the session

The benefit of the empathy map doesn’t end with the workshop itself. As a design artifact, an
empathy map can help the product team along their product’s development cycle.

Use the empathy map as a reference

Empathy maps can be used as documentation. An empathy map can be a North Star to guide
your team in times of uncertainty; team members can use it when they need to validate an
assumption about their users. But, it’s vital to keep empathy maps up to date by revising and
adjusting them as you learn more about your users.

Turn your empathy map into a poster

It’s possible to create a nice reminder of what the user is thinking or feeling by turning an
empathy map into a poster. Create a few copies of the map and hang them around the office.
This helps ensure the user remains in people’s minds as they work.
Turn an empathy map into a poster and hang it in a high traffic area in your workspace. Credited to
Paul Boag

Conclusion
Using empathy maps in the design process is a great step in getting your product team to
think using a customer-first philosophy. When done well, empathy maps create a chain
reaction that affects the entire project; deeper understanding of users affects the product
requirements, which affects the product strategy, which affects the prototypes, and as a result,
makes for a better final design of a product.