Empathy mapping 101 (and practice exercise)
Empathy mapping 101 (and practice exercise)
BONUS: A free review of your empathy map!!
Hey there!
In my stack on writing UX content for older humans, I shared suggestions based on an empathy map I created:
You may also be asked to create something similar for your users. So, while preparing content for a few workshops I’ll be delivering, I wondered if I could offer you the same via this newsletter. Hence, this stack!
We’ll be covering:
What’s an empathy map?
Why it’s important?
When to create an empathy map? (as popularised by Dave Gray)
How to create it?
How to use empathy maps?
A practice exercise based on a real-life scenario
If you attempt this exercise, hit me up for a quick review for free. (Read on for details)
For the uninitiated, UX Writing Bud translates UXW mumbo-jumbo to human so you can learn and kickstart your career with the least effort and investment. If that’s your jam…
What’s an empathy map?
An empathy map is the visual representation of your user. Divided into 4 quadrants, it summarises a user’s thoughts, feelings, quotes, and actions.
As opposed to personas, empathy maps focus on the psychographics of the user rather than their demographics (age, gender, academic background, etc.).
The latter may play a role, though. How?
A user’s academic background and literacy level may affect their feelings about certain designs or vocabulary. Their race or gender may define how they think and behave. So, even though such things are not a part of empathy maps, they do impact it.
Now, should they be a part of the empathy map?
No. The purpose of the empathy map is to evoke empathy for the user. Mentioning things like race, gender, location, etc., may do the opposite, and our biases might creep in.
Why should you create an empathy map?
There are many benefits to creating empathy maps:
The process itself is insightful and helps identify gaps in the current research. (lots of aha moments too!)
It helps prioritise product features and gives direction to future research.
It’s a go-to document for everyone on the team for a shared understanding of the end user (A big-picture view of all the user research)
Empathy maps help identify user emotion patterns and behaviours, creating personas for more informed decisions.
It helps you get an automatic buy-in from the team and stakeholders as they collaborate on it.
When is the right time to create an empathy map?
Anytime! :D This video captures the idea beautifully!
How to create an empathy map?
Team size: You can create an empathy map on your own or with your team. The best ones, however, are collaborative.
Sample size: There can be one empathy map for one user or a comprehensive one (higher level) where several users are clubbed into creating one empathy map. Both are fine, depending on the context. (I have found the most benefit from clubbed ones.)
Process: Empathy maps are best-created based on tasks or goals.
Step 1: Define your scope and goals
Scope → Who is your user? This is where demographics enter the picture.
Goal → What’ll be their task/goal? This could be limited to 1-2 flows or the entire product usage experience.
Step 2: Curate the research
User interviews: You interview a user (in-person or virtually) where you can see their face and upper body with screen sharing. You assign them a task and ask them to think aloud as they complete it. Meanwhile, you take notes of their body language, thoughts, friction points, feelings, etc.
Diary studies: Notes a user makes while completing a task or using your product.
Customer support logs: Tickets generated by users, how they were resolved, and the actions and thoughts after that. You can also shortlist some users from here to call or make contextual inquiries further.
User reviews
Step 3: Build the empathy map
Identify different themes and start placing them in their respective quadrants.
Says: Direct quotes of what the user said in an interview or says in general
Thinks: Internal thoughts of a user while doing a specific task or goal, motivations and needs
Does: Actions your user is taking to complete the task/goal, body language cues
Feels: Emotions of the user as they go through the process of completing the task/goal
You can do this using Post-Its, FigJam or something similar like Miro.
How to use an empathy map?
Use it as a data point to get buy-in from stakeholders.
Log your observations on the go in a framework everyone understands and interprets easily.
Ask your users to create an empathy map for themselves while they complete the task (helpful with diary studies). This can serve as a secondary source of research to compare notes.
Share it across teams as a single source of truth to retain focus on the end user.
Practice exercise
Pick any product and a task inside it. It could be a product you love or are working on. If you can’t decide, pick one from Pageflows.
Choose 2-3 people to complete that task. They could be your friends, family, colleagues or even strangers from a café.
Ask them to complete the task, one person at a time, and create an empathy map for that group.
Go a step further: Turn those observations and insights from the empathy map into improvement suggestions for the product. Feel free to email the product team to share your findings!
Free review: You can also connect with me to review your empathy map on ADPList or email it at takeoff@uxwritingbud.com.