Empathy Maps

2 min readDec 23, 2020

Why do we need it?

Empathy maps are created to get a better understanding of the needs, desires, and emotions of the users of your product or service.
They are useful for capturing current knowledge and assumptions about users that you can test and validate through research.

First, define who you are ‘talking about’. Select a persona that represents someone from the Stakeholder Map and relate their feelings/actions to the current problem or ‘’as-is” condition. Put the persona in the middle of your map.
Everyone will contribute their observations and place them in the corresponding section on the chart. You can discuss your ideas, however, start with brainstorming.
Once the chart starts to fill up, you can collaborate more and converge on some of the insights. Once you have completed your map, summarize the information that shows the “pain points” felt by the person and then summarize the benefits that could happen if those pain points were eliminated.
Finally, use the summarized ‘Pain Points’ to develop a Problem Statement and use the summarized “Benefits” to construct a Goal/Objective Statement.

For each of your pain points, you should have a corresponding gain or opportunity. How this persona would benefit from solving the problem?
Consider the outcomes identified earlier during the challenge, experiment, disrupt. your flip chart in pains/gains.
Set aside personal preferences.
See the world as the users see it.