Empathy map — Go UX mapping with the Empathy map!

Vidyani Gunarathne
2 min readSep 11, 2021

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What is the Empathy map?

You don’t have to agree with their feelings or agree with their point of view, but you do need to understand where they’re coming from to make conclusions that take their perspective and needs into account. With this in mind, an empathy map is a tool for briefly summarizing a user or kind of user to help others in understanding them. An empathy map is a collaborative tool that allows teams to learn more about their users. An empathy map, similar to a user persona, can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. Dave Gray developed the empathy map, which has gained a lot of attention in the agile environment.

Empathy map uses

Empathy mapping is a useful method for getting to know your users. You may acquire rich insight into what your users think, feel, say, and do by knowing what they think, feel, say, and do. This can help you discover actual difficulties, problems, or worries that your users may have right now. As you evaluate and synthesize data about your users, creating an empathy map may help give a structure. Creating the map might also assist you in determining what information you may be missing. You may use individual maps to identify trends, see patterns, and begin to comprehend the subtleties between and within user groups if you generate them after completing a single interview.

Empathy map template

What Empathy map contains?

An empathy map is a visual representation of what you’ve studied about your users. The four quadrants of an empathy map are where you depict what your persona says, does, thinks, and feels. It will depict the individual as a whole, as well as how your product fits into their lives. In the middle, you usually place a representative image or the name of the persona type, and four parts around it. Things in the “says” section is taken directly from research sessions and are not typical verbatim quotes from this type of user. The “does” section outlines what a user performs. You should give details of the specific activities as well as the context in which or how they are carried out. The “thinks” section describes what is going on in a person’s mind at any time. You’ll want to express what’s on the mind right now, what comes up frequently, and what takes priority. The “feels” section depicts the user type’s emotional condition in various scenarios. You’ll try to isolate the exact feeling from their thinking, although it might be a consequence of their thinking or the driving force behind their actions. An empathy map is a summary of data that may be used to assist team members to understand their users.

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Vidyani Gunarathne

Software Engineer | Java | WSO2 Integration Developer | Azure