Empathy Map Template

What is the template?

The Empathy Map template is used for an exercise designed to better understand your customers’ wants and needs. Use customer research, interviews, and data to help fuel the information provided within the Empathy Map.

How do you use it?

The following steps will help you get started using the Empathy Map template.

Step 1: Define the who

Define the specific user that the team will be working to understand better. This can be a defined persona or an individual user.

If you have more than one individual that will need an empathy map, duplicate the blank template before getting started.

Step 2: Brainstorm

Go through each quadrant as a group, plotting ideas from the whole team within the section.

What do they think/feel? This quadrant captures the user’s emotional state, often represented as an adjective or a short sentence for context.

What do they do? This quadrant encloses the actions the user takes.

What do they say/hear? These two quadrants should contain what the user says out loud in an interview or some other usability study. Ideally, it contains quotes directly from research.

As a final step, go through the goal statements for the user as well as the typical frustrations or hurdles they may encounter when interacting with your solution, service, or product.

Step 3: Cluster and refine

Go through the team’s initial responses to cluster, refine, and clean up the map. This should be used as a tool to remove bias from designs and align the team on a single, shared understanding of the user.