What are Empathy Maps in Customer Experience?

Empathy Maps

Empathy Maps is a word that seems to be thrown around a lot these days, particularly in the UX and UI design community. An empathy map is basically putting together things that a designer knows about the user after understanding everything they need to know about the said user. UX Empathy Maps help designers emphasize research observations and in turn, make decisions on how they need to approach the next step of the product development cycle. In other words, empathy maps provide a visual representation of user behavior based on product-specific data and insights.

Empathy maps are part of the design thinking process and are used to help improve user experience. This is mostly done with the help of validating hypotheses that designers have.

They also allow designers to visualize behavior, thus uniting the team around one understanding of the user. These maps help limit miscommunication and misunderstanding. This is important when addressing targeted audiences, such as customers and users.

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When designers perform research, they understand basic user behavior. However, building an empathy map takes this one step further. UX designers can find more nuanced details about the user’s style, the way they operate, their characteristic behaviors, and to some extent their psychological profile as well. finally, all this information collected helps build centralized data that in turn builds an empathy map.

With the right data, a designer can draw out a map on a whiteboard within just 20-30 minutes. 

What does an Empathy Map Look Like?

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Four quadrants follow the user, and their centers correspond to the four quadrants. These four quadrants organize the infographics by category, each of which provides insight into the user’s perspective. A person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors reflect in four quadrants of an empathy map. You put the user in the center of the map, and they get categorized into quadrants. These quadrants indicate critical data points about the user in a visually understandable format.

Empathy Maps
Empathy Map Sample

When Does an Empathy Map Come in Handy?

A good starting point for applying learnings is at the beginning of the design process. When creating these maps, it is best to do user research before determining what a product needs. You can decide which problems in product strategy need the help of an empathy map. It also means that they are also ideal for redesigning projects.

When designed well, user maps can create a domino effect that affects numerous aspects of the project. Real-world observations are necessary to develop a meaningful empathy map, for example, data from user interviews is a great starting point. If you already have stakeholder feedback, you should still use empathy maps to validate any hypothesis. This is also known as a “10-minute Persona” since it provides insight into the circumstances during a meeting in the most concise way.

Why Create Practical Empathy Maps?

Designers can use maps to understand their responsibilities to a user and the challenges they need to solve. Because empathy maps do not focus on any specific scenario, they are great for creating quick user personas that in turn helps products succeed. Depending on the tasks you need to create, you might want to develop several empathy maps. If you need help building out an empathy map, reach out to me on Twitter. I’d be happy to help.

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