Why Empathy Mapping is Important
We have all heard of projects where the end product technically delivered against the requirements, but user adoption was a failure. Using elicitation techniques to identify stakeholder objectives is extremely important but oftentimes falls short when ensuring that the overall user experience of the end product is successful. In his book, Business Model Generations, Alex Osterwalder explains that one of the biggest reasons most products fail is that they lack knowledge or perception of their target audience – they lack empathy. 1
In order to improve upon the overall user experience of our products, we must first understand our stakeholders. By putting ourselves in their shoes and considering their perspectives, we can gain valuable insights that inform and greatly improve our product development, strategy, and overall approach to a project.
Empathy Mapping Boosts Requirements
An Empathy Map is a powerful tool for understanding the needs and desires of our stakeholders. It helps us identify the most valuable requirements by mapping out the user’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This results in product development that is directly tailored to the users’ needs. This not only leads to a better user experience but can also increase user engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, empathy mapping helps us identify potential pain points or areas where users may struggle, allowing us to make necessary adjustments and improvements.
Empathy Mapping Best Practices
The overarching goal of empathy mapping is to gain a deeper level of understanding from a certain perspective (i.e., client, prospect, partner) within a given context (i.e., buying decision or product experience). 2 Here are a few best practices for conducting empathy mapping:
Start With a Clear Understanding of Your Target Audience
Before you begin your empathy mapping exercise, make sure you have a solid understanding of who your target audience is. Your personas should include demographics, psychographics, and any other relevant information that can help you understand your users’ needs and motivations.
Creating a user persona involves developing a detailed and realistic representation of your ideal user. Here are some useful steps to help you create a user persona:
Conduct user research: Collect data about your target audience through surveys, interviews, and observations. Identify common patterns in their behaviors, attitudes, goals, and pain points.
Identify key characteristics: Based on your research, identify the key characteristics that define your target audience. This might include demographic information, such as age, gender, income, and education level – as well as psychographic information, such as values, interests, and lifestyle.
Create a persona profile: Create a detailed persona profile using the information you’ve gathered. Give your persona a name, job title, and personal background. Include information such as their goals, motivations, challenges, and decision-making process.
Prioritize persona attributes: Identify the most important attributes to help focus your efforts on the features that are most likely to bring the greatest value to your stakeholders.
Use the persona in product design: Incorporate your user persona into your product design process. Use it as a reference point when making decisions about UI design and feature prioritization.
Conduct Research
To create an accurate empathy map, you’ll need to gather data and insights from a variety of sources. This might include customer surveys, focus groups, social media analytics, or even interviews with your target audience.
When gathering information from users about their experience with a product or process, it’s important to ask the right questions. Firstly, it’s helpful to understand their overall impression of the experience. How do they feel when they hear the process mentioned? What are their expectations when interacting with the product or process?
Next, it’s important to delve into their experience with the product or process. What problems were they hoping to solve by using it? Was it easy to use and did it meet their needs?
Lastly, asking about memorable experiences, whether positive or negative, can provide valuable insights into areas that most need improvement and areas that are already functioning well.
Overall, asking these questions will help create a visual empathy map that accurately reflects the user’s experience.
Use a Visual Template
Empathy mapping typically involves creating a visual representation of your target audience’s experience. You can use many templates, but the most common includes a simple four-quadrant diagram representing the user’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and pain points. We went a step further to include gains and pains, along with space to include any other relevant thoughts and feelings that might be motivating behavior.
Collaborate with Your Team
Empathy mapping is most effective when it’s a collaborative effort involving multiple stakeholders and departments. Make sure you involve representatives from different departments ensuring you are considering all key perspectives. In general, your product development team will be at the forefront providing insights into the technical aspects of the product or service and how it’s being developed to meet customer needs. Consider also including the following groups in your empathy mapping process:
Customers or users: The primary group to focus on when creating an empathy map is the end-users or customers. They are the ones who will be using the product or service and will have unique perspectives on their needs and experiences.
Sales and customer service: These teams often interact directly with customers and can provide insights into their pain points, frequently asked questions, and feedback.
Marketing: This department can provide insights into customer behaviors and demographics, as well as how the product or service is perceived in the market.
Management: Leadership teams can provide strategic insights into the company’s overall goals and objectives and how the product or service fits into the company’s larger vision.
By including perspectives from various departments, you can create a more comprehensive empathy map that considers the needs and perspectives of all stakeholders involved.
Use Your Empathy Map to Inform Your Strategy
- Identify key insights: Review the empathy map and identify key insights that will inform your strategy. This might include customer pain points, unmet needs, desires, and behaviors.
- Prioritize insights: Once you have identified key insights, prioritize them based on their importance and relevance to your strategy. Focus on insights that have the most significant impact on your business goals.
- Determine your MVP: Using the insights gained from the empathy map, coupled with the agreed-upon Business Objective(s), prioritize your requirements, and develop a plan that will yield the greatest ROI.
- Test and refine: Implement the plan developed in step three and test its effectiveness. Refine your approach based on customer feedback and other Key Performance Indicators.
- Repeat the process: Empathy mapping is an iterative process, so repeat the process regularly to stay up to date with customer needs and preferences. This will help you stay ahead of the competition and continue to meet the evolving needs of your customers.
Download an Empathy Map Template in the Tools & Templates section of our website.
Learn more about understanding your stakeholders through Journey Mapping.
1 Business Model Generations (John Wiley and Sons, 2010) Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
2 David Gray. “Empathy Map” – GameStorming, July 14, 2017
