Empathy Maps in UX Research

Learn how to create empathy maps by capturing user perspectives, goals, influences, and feelings in order to develop a more empathetic and user-centered design approach
Empathy Maps in UX Research Lesson

An empathy map is an artifact you can produce as a result of UX qualitative research to visualize your findings. It works as a tool to understand what a user/user persona is thinking, feeling, doing, and saying.

Empathy maps articulate what is currently known about your users. Producing such maps helps your team create a shared understanding of user needs to make sure you make better decisions. An added benefit is that doing so also helps you identify gaps in your research.

What is an empathy map? Bad Practice
What is an empathy map? Best Practice

An empathy map is a diagram that captures knowledge about a user's behaviors and attitudes. It provides a glance into who a user is as a whole and is not chronological or sequential. Empathy maps help design teams create a shared understanding of user needs and aid in decision-making.

Traditional empathy maps are split into 4 quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. In the middle, we place the name of the user or user persona — depending on whether it reflects a particular user or an aggregation of multiple users.

One-user empathy maps are usually based on a user interview or a user's log from a diary study. Aggregated empathy maps represent segments of users who exhibit similar behaviors, and they can be a first step in creating personas.

Why empathy maps are important

Empathy maps help teams understand and focus on user needs. In user-centered design, empathy maps are best used from the very beginning of the design process.

Both the processes of making an empathy map and the finished artifact have important benefits:

  • They help capture who a user or persona is. Empathy maps help you analyze qualitative research and discover gaps in your current knowledge.
  • They communicate a user or persona to the team and stakeholders. An empathy map illustrates user attitudes and behaviors, which can help protect the project from bias.
  • They collect data directly from the user. When filled in directly by users, empathy maps can act as a secondary data source and represent a starting point for a summary of the user session.[1]

Pro Tip! Keep empathy maps up-to-date by revising and adjusting them as you do more research.

The four quadrants

A typical empathy map includes four quadrants:

  • Says: What the user says about the product. Ideally, this section contains real quotes from users recorded during interviews or user testing sessions.
  • Thinks: What is the user thinking about when interacting with a product? What occupies the user's thoughts? What matters to the user?
  • Feels: 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?
  • Does: What actions does the user take? What actions and behaviors did you notice?

Some of these quadrants may seem ambiguous or overlapping. For example, it may be difficult to distinguish between the Thinks and Feels sections. Do not focus too much on being precise — if an item appears to fit into multiple quadrants, just pick one.[2]

Says

The Says quadrant contains what the user says out loud in an interview or usability study. Ideally, it contains verbatim user quotes from research. For example:

  • "I am loyal to Delta because I never have a bad experience."
  • "I want something reliable."
  • "I don't understand what to do from here."
Thinks

The Thinks quadrant captures what the user is thinking throughout the experience. Ask yourself what occupies the user's thoughts. What matters to the user? Use the qualitative research gathered to find answers.

It is possible to have the same content in both the Says and Thinks quadrants. However, pay special attention to what users think but may not be willing to vocalize. Try to understand why they are reluctant to share — are they unsure, self-conscious, polite, or afraid? For example:

  • This is really annoying
  • Am I dumb for not understanding this?
  • This is taking too much time
Does

The Does quadrant encloses the actions the user takes. From your research, identify what users physically do. For example, users might do the following:

  • Refresh page several times
  • Shop around to compare prices
  • Check the size chart

Sometimes, users' actions may contradict what they say. For example, seemingly positive actions and negative quotes or emotions can come from the same users. These juxtapositions reflect how complex the human psyche is and are incredibly valuable to uncover.

Feels

The Feels quadrant is the user's emotional state, often represented as an adjective plus a short sentence for context.

Ask yourself what worries the user. What does the user get excited about? How does the user feel about the experience? For example:

  • Impatient: Pages load too slowly
  • Confused: Too many contradictory prices
  • Worried: They are doing something wrong
The 5-step process to create an empathy map Bad Practice
The 5-step process to create an empathy map Best Practice

While you can create an empathy map on your own, it's better to do it with a team to get multiple perspectives.

Here's a 5-step process to get you started on an empathy map:

  1. Define your scope and goals. Decide who your user is and what task they're accomplishing.
  2. Gather materials you're going to use to make the actual empathy map. You can do this with a whiteboard, post-its, and sharpies, or remotely on a tool like Mural or RealTime.
  3. Collect data. You can obtain the necessary information through interviews, direct observation, contextual inquiries, and even diary studies. Bring the findings to your team and start empathy mapping as a group.
  4. Have everyone on your team read through the data and generate different ideas for every quadrant.
  5. Converge all different post-its. Start to cluster similar ideas together and name the themes.

Depending on the purpose of your empathy map, polish and digitize the output accordingly. Include the user, any outstanding questions, and the date and version number.[3]

Other empathy map formats Bad Practice
Other empathy map formats Best Practice

4-quadrant empathy maps are useful during the initial analysis. However, this isn't the only possible format. If you need more detailing or have unique needs, adapt the map by including additional quadrants like Goals, Pains, and Gains.

At later stages — for example, for brainstorming sessions focused on UX design — you might find Paul Boag's empathy map format a better option.

The map contains a different set of categories:

  • Feelings: How does the user feel about the experience? What matters to them?
  • Tasks: What tasks are users trying to complete?
  • Influences: What people, things, or places 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?[4]
When to create empathy maps Bad Practice
When to create empathy maps Best Practice

Empathy maps are most useful at the beginning of the design process, right after user research. Creating empathy maps helps synthesize research observations, reveal deeper insights into users' needs, and see things from their points of view.

Empathy maps provide you with the information needed to develop requirements and concepts. You must understand users' attitudes and behaviors before creating solutions — be it content ideas, webpage design, app prototypes, or a new service offering.

They can also be used throughout the design process and revised as new data becomes available. A sparsely populated map indicates where more user research needs to be done.

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