Description
Empathy mapping is a method that allows a group to explore and discuss different types of users, aiming to ’empathise’ with them.
In many situations, groups will talk about users as one homogenous clump, and will talk about the things that users do in a very broad sense. As an activity, empathy mapping helps a group to focus in on individual types of users and explore their experiences in detail.
Empathy mapping can be used in a workshop, meeting or any kind of session that involves talking about users. It is often used early in a design thinking workshop to have the participants focus on users from the start.
An empathy mapping activity will usually focus on exploring the following aspects of a user’s experience, though you could change them to suit your purpose (each of these is covered in more detail below):
- Who are they?
- What do they need to do?
- What do they see?
- What do they say?
- What do they do?
- What do they hear?
- What do they think and feel?
These questions will also sit in some kind of context. You may be analysing the outcomes or user research, discussing how to reach new customers or planning product features. This context will help frame the discussion.
Before you start
Before you start, make sure you understand the context in which the activity sits – what do you want to achieve out of it, and what will the outcomes contribute to?
You will need some kind of source of information about users. One of the best ways to conduct an empathy mapping activity is to do it with the outcomes from user research – getting participants to analyse the research data and summarise it in the empathy map. However, this activity often uses the existing knowledge of the participants.
You will need a list of ‘types’ of user as well. As facilitator of the activity, you can provide the group with a list of user types, or have the group create the list.
Running the activity
Introduce the context to the group so they all understand what the activity is being used for and what it will ultimately contribute to.
Either provide the group with a list of types of user, or have them brainstorm.
Groups can work on the same types of user, and compare their outcomes. Or each group can work with a different type of user and present back to the larger group.
Provide the empathy map template and explain what to focus on in each section. Explain that they should go around in numbered order and discuss each section in turn, filling in a few points in each section.
If you haven’t prepared templates, just draw a big circle as the head, give it some eyes, nose and ears (with eyes and nose facing right so they line up with ‘see’ and ‘say’) and write the headings around the head.
Who is the user?
Describe in detailed terms (not vague statements) who this user is. Make them feel real, not generic, by including enough detail that they feel real and grounded. This might be demographics like age, location and personal characteristics (if these are relevant). It could be a short quote in their own words. It could be a short narrative paragraph. The main thing is that it is detailed enough that you aren’t talking too broadly for the activity to be useful.
What do they need to do?
What is their goal in this context? As with the ‘who are they’ section, make this detailed, not generic. Discuss what they are trying to achieve, what steps they might use to do it, what decisions they might need to make. How will they know when they have achieved their goal?
What do they see?
Discuss what they see in their environment that has a bearing on their goal in this context. This might be about what they are literally seeing in the product now, but also could be about what they see competitors doing, what marketing messages they see or what they are otherwise seeing and reading.
What do they say?
Discuss what they are saying. This might be feedback they are already providing about the product, what they say to their peers or colleagues, or what’s being said on social media.
What do they do?
Discuss the kinds of activities they are already doing. This is different to what they need to do in that it is about what is happening now. It could be about how they do a task now, though could be about related tasks that they also do.
What do they hear?
This one is similar to ‘what do they see?’ and you might find some overlap. It might include what they hear in the actual product, what they hear other people saying, or what they are hearing via marketing messages or hearsay.
What do they think and feel?
In this section, cover things that are internal to the user (you’ll see that the last 4 sections are all external to them), relating to how they think and feels.
Note that my template is different to the original one from Gamestorming, which had pains and gains. I changed it as my participants always got tripped up as they’d usually discussed various pains in other sections and gains and goals seemed quite similar. So I leave this for more general thoughts and feelings that haven’t been covered already.
How groups do the activity
I have groups work on this activity differently depending on how well the group already works together and what their personal styles are.
For groups who are just getting to know each other (as you might find if you run this towards the beginning of a workshop with participants who are new to each other), I usually have them work individually, writing one or two sticky notes for each section (they do need to have completed the ‘Who are they’ as a group first, or the results will be a mess of different kinds of user). They then post up the results to the template and discuss from there.
For groups who know each other and are comfortable working together, they can have a brainstorm and discussion around the template.
What to do with the outcome
A lot of the intent for this activity is to ground meeting or workshop participants in the experiences of real users, instead of just saying ‘users’ generally. So the outcome is the discussion and shared understanding – that’s more important than the actual diagram.
If you use this as a workshop activity with many small groups, have them present their summary to the workshop, so the whole room understands the different types of user.
In a workshop or longer meeting, put the empathy maps on the wall so people can refer back to them during the workshop. As facilitator, refer to them when you are discussing other parts of the workshop.
What to watch out for
If the activity is run by asking the groups to come up with a list of users, then use their existing knowledge to explore each user type (and this is OK – it’s how the activity is most often run) be very aware that there will be all kinds of assumptions, stereotypes and biases built into the activity. Before using this as a core part of a design process, make sure you validate that real users’ experiences are actually similar to what the group came up with.
