DESIGN THINKING

Empathy Maps

In the world of user experience (UX) design, understanding the needs and emotions of users is paramount.

Empathy mapping is a powerful tool that allows designers to gain deeper insights into the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of their target audience. By putting themselves in the shoes of users, designers can create more meaningful and engaging experiences. Let’s explore the concept of UX empathy mapping, its benefits, and some examples that you can follow.

What’s Empathy?

It’s understanding another person’s actions, thoughts, and emotions. Empathy is all about being able to look at a situation or an issue from a different perspective. We can divide empathy into:

Emotional

Cognitive​

The latter one is the key part playing in UX and designing. Cognitive empathy helps understand the needs and expectations of a certain user group or persona and then make the product in line with those.

User’s Needs and Expectations

We need to ask ourselves a few questions before designing a product about the needs and expectations of a user to identify what should be taken into consideration throughout our process

01

What is desired and useful?

02

What certain features bring to the table? What’s the positive value here?

03

How will the changes positively influence the product?

Why in UX do we mostly talk about the user's needs and not expectations?

It’s because expectations are very subjective, dependent on context, easy to change, and tied with emotions rather than the actual state of things.

When it comes to needs, those are objective, less subject to change, and they are a sort of a must-have. That’s why when asking those three questions above, we focus on the added value, how it changes the user experience, and think about the objective aspect of the product that can apply to many users, rather than a personal feeling.

Needs’ diagnosis

So how do we pinpoint and identify the needs? Firstly, we should start with three steps of this process so that we’re able to understand the needs and differentiate between expectations and needs. The three main steps of the process are:

  • Observation
  • Analysis
  • Synthesizing knowledge

The tool that we should use for getting to know answers is the Empathy Map framework

What’s Empathy Mapping?

Empathy Mapping is one of the basic and key UX tools to get to know and understand users. It’s about profiling users and clustering them into types (personas). It’s a visual representation of a user's experience, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It helps designers to empathize with users and understand their needs and frustrations. The process involves creating a persona, a fictional representation of a specific user, and mapping their experiences and emotions throughout their journey.

Thanks to Empathy mapping we can answers these questions

01

What are the users doing?

02

How are they doing that?

03

Why are they doing that?

Parts of empathy mapping

The overall goal of putting an empathy map together is to pinpoint the challenges, areas to improve, and base product development process on researched facts rather than emotions or trends. It helps push through the noise of opinions and focus on what can move the needle.

Here’s how the framework looks

The empathy map is divided into four quadrants

SAY

SAY

This quadrant focuses on the user's thoughts and opinions. What are they saying aloud or in their mind? What are their expectations, fears, or aspirations? By understanding what users are saying, designers can better align their product with their needs and desires.​

THINK

THINK

This quadrant explores the user's thoughts and beliefs. What are their assumptions, misconceptions, or doubts? Understanding the user's thought process helps designers identify any cognitive barriers that may hinder the user experience. By addressing these thoughts, designers can create a more intuitive and seamless experience.​

DO

DO

This quadrant examines the user's actions and behaviors. What are they doing or not doing? How do they interact with the product? By observing their actions, designers can identify pain points, bottlenecks, or areas where users struggle. This insight allows designers to optimize the user flow and create a more intuitive interface.​

FEEL

FEEL

This quadrant deals with the user's emotions and feelings. What are their frustrations, joys, or anxieties? By understanding the user's emotional state, designers can create experiences that evoke positive emotions and minimize negative ones. This emotional connection is crucial in building a product that users will love and continue to use.​

Perks of empathy mapping

Empathy mapping brings several benefits to the UX design process

01

User-Centric Design

By understanding the needs, motivations, and frustrations of users, designers can create products and services that truly meet their expectations. Empathy mapping helps shift the focus from the solution to the user, resulting in more user-centric designs.​​

02

Enhanced Empathy

Empathy is a crucial skill for UX designers. By stepping into the shoes of users and exploring their experiences, designers can develop a deeper understanding of their target audience and their unique challenges.​​

03

Identification of Pain Points​​

Empathy mapping helps identify pain points and areas of improvement in the user journey. By mapping out the user's emotions and frustrations, designers can focus on addressing these pain points and providing better solutions.​​

04

Improved Communication​​

Empathy maps provide a visual representation of user experiences, making it easier for designers to communicate their findings to stakeholders, developers, and other team members. It helps align everyone's understanding and ensures a more collaborative design process.​​

05

Validation of Assumptions​​

Empathy mapping allows designers to validate their assumptions and hypotheses about users. By testing and refining these assumptions, designers can make more informed design decisions based on real user insights.​​

The Empathy Mapping Process

Gather User Research​
Start by collecting qualitative and quantitative data about your target audience. Conduct user interviews, surveys, and usability tests to gather insights into their needs, behaviors, and pain points.​
Gather User Research​
Create a Persona​
Based on the research, create a persona that represents your target user. Give them a name, age, occupation, and background to make them more relatable.​
Create a Persona​
Fill in the Empathy Map​
The quadrants don’t need to be filled out in any specific order. Sometimes it might be confusing and answers can be overlapping, however, you can look at our next article section to get the idea of what the answers can be like. ​
Fill in the Empathy Map​
Analyze and Validate​
Analyze the empathy map and look for patterns, recurring themes, and insights. Validate your assumptions by testing the empathy map with real users and incorporating their feedback.​
Analyze and Validate​
Iterate and Refine
Use the insights from the empathy map to inform your design decisions. Iterate and refine your designs based on user feedback and continue to update the empathy map as you gather more insights.
Iterate and Refine

Examples of Empathy Mapping

Let’s dive into examples how the response to the Empathy Map questions can look​

What the user says​

I’m Apple’s faithful user and never experienced anything bad

I want something reliable​

I don’t understand how to go to the user’s account​

What the user thinks​

It’s very irritating

Am I dumb to not get it?

What the user does​

Refreshed the page a few times​

Research the product to compare the prices​

What the user feels

Impatient: the pages are loading too slow​

Worried: not sure how to get the wanted effect, doubt in their skills​

Confused: too many contradictory prices or the flow is not clear​

Conclusion

Empathy mapping is a powerful tool that helps UX designers gain a deeper understanding of their users. By mapping out the user's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, designers can create more meaningful and impactful experiences. Empathy mapping brings the user to the center of the design process, resulting in user-centric products and services. So, the next time you embark on a UX design project, don't forget to incorporate empathy mapping into your process. It will help you create designs that truly resonate with your users.