Understanding your users with an Empathy Map
An empathy map is a straightforward visual tool that helps teams understand their users’ experiences by focusing on what they say, do, think, and feel. It’s a practical approach used in user experience (UX) design, Learning Experience Design (LXD) and customer strategy to gain insights into users’ needs and emotions.
In this example we share a simple empathy map template designed to help teams step into their customers’ shoes and view their product, service or experience from the user’s perspective, reflecting on the complete customer sensory experience.
With Questiory you can create more than a template, you could use it to build a tool to interact directly with your users, but before discussing how you could use Questiory as an empathy map generator, let’s explore empathy mapping a little more.
What is an Empathy Map?
An empathy map divides user observations into (traditionally) four key areas: Say, Do, See, Think, and Feel. This structured exercise encourages teams to consider different aspects of the user experience, facilitating a deeper understanding of the customer. Having an empathy map template could be a useful starting point for discussions about our user needs, experiences and behaviors.
Some of the advantages of using an Empathy Map
Using an empathy map can enhance team understanding of the customer, highlighting emotional and psychological aspects that might not be evident from data alone. It can reveal insights into user behavior, help identify research gaps, and support the development of more user-centered products and services. Essentially, it helps in creating a more nuanced view of the user experience.
Guiding your users through your Empathy Map
To effectively use an empathy map, consider these questions for each quadrant:
- Say:
- What are users explicitly mentioning about their interaction with the experience?
- Which elements of their interaction do they highlight as memorable?
- Are there specific features or aspects that users frequently bring up?
- How do users articulate their likes and dislikes about the experience?
- What suggestions do users offer for improving their experience?
- Do:
- Which actions demonstrate users’ engagement or disengagement with the experience?
- What behaviors indicate users are finding value or facing challenges?
- Are there unexpected ways in which users are interacting with the experience?
- How do users navigate through the experience, and where do they spend most of their time?
- What steps do users take to solve problems or enhance their experience?
- Think:
- What might users be hoping to achieve or expecting from the experience?
- Are there underlying concerns or hesitations that influence their engagement?
- How do users’ thoughts reflect their satisfaction or dissatisfaction?
- What misconceptions could users have about the experience?
- What aspirations or goals are driving users’ involvement in the experience?
- See:
- What external factors or contexts are influencing users’ perceptions of the experience?
- How do the design and aesthetics of the experience affect users’ perceptions?
- What comparisons might users be making with similar experiences?
- How do users perceive the complexity or simplicity of navigating the experience?
- What visual or sensory elements stand out to users during their interaction?
- Feel:
- What emotions are users most frequently expressing throughout their experience?
- How do specific aspects of the experience contribute to users’ emotional highs and lows?
- In what ways do users’ emotions influence their decisions and actions within the experience?
- What feelings are evoked by users’ successes or failures within the experience?
- How do interactions with others within the experience affect users’ emotional responses?
Enhancing Your Empathy Map
With Questiory you can make your empathy map as simple or as comprehensive as you want. To enhance your interactive empathy map, you could consider these additions leveraging specific interactions and visualizations:
- Quantitative insights gathering: Utilize number entry for users to rate aspects of their experience. Visualize with simple math to summarize average satisfaction levels.
- Deep-dive into open feedback: Implement open-ended questions for detailed user comments. Use cards for individual responses and word clouds to highlight common themes.
- Emotional journey mapping: Ask users to categorize their emotions throughout their experience. Visualize with nodes showing the range of emotions linked to specific stages.
- Visual feedback collection: Encourage image entries to capture user experiences visually. Showcase these images on cards or flipcards for a visual summary.
- Icon-based quick feedback: Use iconic entry for users to pick icons that represent their feelings. Display these as iconic cards for an at-a-glance sentiment analysis.
- Creative expression: Allow drawing entries to enable users to visually express their thoughts. You could even compile these drawings into a comic layout for a narrative overview.
- Interactive scenario exploration: Set up categorised questions for users to describe scenarios they encounter. Use blocks visualization to organize these scenarios by category for easy analysis.
- Priority ranking: Employ multiple choice/multiple answer interactions for users to prioritize features or aspects of their experience. Summarize results in bar chart or pie charts to understand preferences.
- Sentiment analysis: Utilize open-ended questions to gather qualitative feedback. Analyze sentiments with rotating words visualization to spotlight recurring words in a dynamic display.
- Experience valuation: Have users assign values to different aspects of their experience using a valuation interaction. Visualize this data with radar charts to compare dimensions of user satisfaction.
As a summary, a empathy map is a useful tool for gaining insights into user experiences, encouraging a more user-centered approach in product and service design. By focusing on what users say, do, think, and feel, teams can develop a deeper understanding of their customers. This empathy map template could be a practical starting point for exploring the user experience and ensuring that decisions reflect users’ needs and emotions. But really, sky is the limit on how deep you want to go to understand how your users experience the solutions you build!