Empathy maps are best used from the very beginning of the design process. The mapping process can help synthesize research observations and reveal deeper insights about a user’s needs
Why Use Empathy Map?
1. Capture who a user or persona is. The empathy-mapping process helps distill and categorize your knowledge of the user into one place.
2. Communicate a user or persona to others: An empathy map is a quick, digestible way to illustrate user attitudes and behaviors. Once created, it should act as a source of truth throughout a project and protect it from bias or unfounded assumptions.
3. Collect data directly from the user. When empathy maps are filled in directly by users, they can act as a secondary data source and represent a starting point for a summary of the user session. Moreover, the interviewer may glean feelings and thoughts from the interviewee that otherwise would have remained hidden.
How does Empathy Map work?
Define the persona of target users and put into center of map, then fill all the 6 boxes accordingly.
1. Say & Do: Anything the customer might say out loud to other people and action they will do about a problem they are trying to solve.
2. Think & Feel: How you empathize with your customer, note down what the customer is most likely feeling.
3. Hear: Everything that your customer hears others saying. It’s a great way to identify the community that they live in.
4. See: What a customer sees in their immediate environment. This also includes what customers are reading or watching, and what they see others doing.
5. Pain: All of the pains that your customer might have that your product or service would solve.
6. Gain: What a customer would gain by using your product or service. How would it make their life better?
