Empathy Map

Why?

Summarize and synthetize findings from observations and interviews in a structured way. Empathy maps can offer valuable and unexpected insights in the user.

How?

Write down your insights and inferred conclusions about your user on a sheet of paper. Try to describe a typical user, by describing what users say, do, hear, think and feel. Often goals and attitudes (pains & gains) are also included to create a richer description.

Ingrediënts

• A large sheet of paper with an empty empathy map template.
• Insights and empathy gained from previous user research.
• A feel for the details that characterize the user.

In practice

Empathy maps can be particularly useful in projects in which the user is very different from the designer in many respects; social design projects for example.