Day 04: Empathy Maps

Susan K Rits
Jul 29, 2017 · 2 min read

An empathy map shows you how individual users feel, think and talk about the experience of using your product.

What it is.

The empathy map is a diagram that categorizes an individual user’s feeling, thoughts and words about your product. It’s the beginning of a persona.

How it’s used.

UX researchers make empathy maps in order to collected and organize data about individual users. After they’ve got a few users’ experiences mapped out they can look for behavior patterns.

Empathy maps will eventually be aggregated and turned into personas.

Discussion.

Empathy maps are an easy way to start collecting data from users and stakeholders about the product you’re designing (or redesigning).

Here’s how you do it:

  1. Give your user(s) a piece of paper and a pen.
  2. Divide the paper into 4 quadrants
  3. Label the quadrants: Feeling, Seeing, Saying, Hearing
  4. Draw a little face int he middle if you want to look especially UX-y

Now ask your user(s) to write the things they feel, see, say and have heard said about your product.

Her’s an example of an empathy map:

They’ll need to either have played around with the application first, or you can have them fill in the form as they click through.

Or you can fill out the form for them, as they’re playing with the product, writing down what you hear them say, and asking them how they feel about it.

Once you’ve collected a few of these, you’ll start to see patterns. Everyone is annoyed by the on boarding flow, no one wants to put their credit card number into the app, most people don’t understand the navigation.

Now is when you’re seeing pain points you can fix. You’re also starting to see personas.

Your Assignment.

Think back to the coffee shop you conducted the design ethnography on. Write up an empathy map for your own experiences there. Then get 2–3 friends to go to the same coffee shop and write their own empathy maps.

  • Think about what annoyed you and what you liked
  • What feelings did you have (e.g. confusion, anticipation, delight, disappointment)
  • What did you hear other customers say?
  • Identify the pain points
  • Identify the delight

Deliverables.

Create a pdf and share your empathy maps in the comments and/or on Dribbble and Twitter #100daysdesign.

Originally published at 100days.design on July 29, 2017.

100 Days of Product Design

TUTORIALS • EXAMPLES • PROJECTS • RESOURCES

Susan K Rits

Written by

Founder: 100 Days of Product Design, Imprintli Publishing, ChicoButter and Rits&Co.

100 Days of Product Design

TUTORIALS • EXAMPLES • PROJECTS • RESOURCES

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