Using empathy maps can help product teams foster user-centric design, and marketing teams improve their business strategies. To maximize the effectiveness of these tools, be sure to collect tangible user research data.
Assuming a homogenous customer base can lead to misguided strategies that fail to resonate with real customers. Be wary of unconscious bias, as it can cause you to overlook key user details.
Collect Data
Empathy mapping can assist you in better understanding your users so that you can develop services or solutions that better suit their needs. It can also identify pain points, frustrations, and positive aspects and gains that users experience. This information will be used to develop a detailed customer persona, which will be the basis for your research and design processes.
Empathy maps are typically divided into four quadrants, highlighting what the user said, did, thought, and felt during the observation or research process. The ‘says’ quadrant identifies the words and phrases the user used to communicate their thoughts. The ‘does’ quadrant identifies the user’s actions while using a product or service. The ‘thinks and feels’ quadrant identifies the emotions the user experienced.
Collect as much data as possible before attempting to build an empathy map. This can be done through several research methods, including interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and listening sessions. Once you have collected the relevant data, combine it on a large paper or digital canvas. It is best to use a template for consistency and divide the map into the four quadrants for easy filing.
Once you have completed the mapping session, review your findings. Ensure that all the information you have gathered is relevant to your project. For example, if you are working on a calendar app, including details about your user’s health may not be relevant.
Conduct Focus Groups or Interviews
Gathering the correct data to create an empathy map is crucial. Empathy maps are typically broken down into four sections or quadrants that categorize what your user sees, hears, thinks, feels, says, and does. This helps teams to understand their audience, visualize their experiences, and adapt to recurring needs.
Whether you use a template or start from scratch, you’ll want to create an area for your team to write on and label each quadrant. Ask your team to work together to fill in the appropriate section with their observations, research notes, and any other qualitative data they have. A typical empathy map will include the user’s ultimate goal, tasks they perform to get closer to that goal, the emotions they feel when they do or don’t achieve their goals, and any other relevant observations about the user’s internal mindset and external environment.
Ensure that the data you collect is relevant to your product or service. For example, suppose you’re developing a fitness app and discover users often need more support when trying to begin a new workout routine. In that case, your team might need to develop motivational features or personalized progress tracking to provide value to customers. It’s also essential to ensure that the data you collect represents a cross-section of your target audience. Using insights not based on real-world observations can lead to misguided strategies, resulting in products or services that don’t meet customer needs.
Ask Questions
The data collected from user interviews, heatmaps, and surveys will provide qualitative information that you can use to understand your users’ goals, pain points, and motivations. However, it is important to be judicious in your questions and to refrain from gathering irrelevant data. For example, it might be interesting to know that your target audience has a cat, but if you’re designing a fitness app that tracks progress, knowing this information isn’t likely to impact your design decisions significantly.
To gather an empathy map, pass out a copy of your free template to each participant and ask them to fill in the four quadrants: says, thinks, feels, and does. As each team member adds sticky notes to the quadrants, look for patterns and themes in what is being said and identify specific details to help you build a complete picture of your target audience.
Once your team has finished constructing their empathy maps, take a step back and review the results. What did you find particularly interesting or valuable? Did your empathy mapping session uncover any new insights that you can use to improve your product or service? If so, update your user personas and adjust your product roadmap accordingly. You can make sure that your items keep satisfying the needs of your target market by using this technique frequently.
Analyze Results
When your team is done filling in the four quadrants of a customer empathy map, it’s essential to review and digitize the results. Grouping similar attributes in the same categories can help to make the mapping session more productive, but you should also look for any gaps or areas that need further study based on your initial goals.
To start the process, you’ll need to prepare a user persona to pair with your empathy map to provide context and identify the insights to gather. Once you’ve completed this step, you’ll be ready to begin mapping.
Each quadrant of an empathy map explores a specific aspect of your target audience: what they see, say, and do, and think and feel. The quadrant should focus on what your users communicate verbally. You can capture these observations in the form of direct quotations or notes.
The ‘does’ quadrant will cover your users’ actions and behaviors through their behavior or how they interact with products and services. Observations in this section should be grouped by common phrases, activities, or habits you notice during your research. Finally, the ‘feels’ quadrant focuses on the emotions your users experience when interacting with products and services. This information can help you see trends and better grasp the psychological effects of your product on your target market.
