Empathy Map Template
Dig deeper into your customer's mind with the empathy map template. Visualize all your user needs and develop products people will love.
Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies
About the Empathy Map template
Many businesses and organizations have created an empathy map template to help them understand their audiences, users, and customers. It’s a great tool to gain insights and develop personas or customer segments.
What is an empathy map?
Empathy maps are visualization tools that allow you to articulate what you know about specific types of users. They are often considered a part of the design thinking methodology, and they empower you to create a shared understanding of user needs and help decision-makers with key judgment calls.
One good empathy map example is how UX professionals use it. They must create products beneficial to users they have never met or interacted with. To do so, it’s important to understand their users and help their colleagues do the same, so an empathy map is a powerful tool that helps them do both.
Benefits of empathy mapping
Many businesses employ empathy mapping as part of the design process because it’s helpful in understanding your users, their desires, and what they want out of your product.
Put a narrative to your data
The basis of empathy mapping is typically some firsthand data received from users that describe their thoughts on using the product. One of the major benefits of empathy mapping is that it requires you to tease out more about the customer from this data, determine what they’re feeling, and create a narrative that informs the rest of your UX & UI design.
Get inside the heads of your users
Empathy maps are also a useful exercise because they force you to put yourself in the shoes of your users and determine how they approach and interact with your product. It’s easy for designers to lose sight of real-world user experience with the product, so empathy maps help keep you grounded.
Easily visualize customer needs
Another benefit of empathy mapping is that it’s a visual exercise that distills various pieces of information about the customer experience into a single reference point. Empathy maps can be used and referenced by different stakeholders and team members at various points of the development cycle, and they’re relatively simple to create.
When to use an empathy map
Empathy maps are highly useful whenever your team needs a greater understanding of user needs, such as collaborating on user personas, and building the “user” in your user story.
Empathy maps help you sketch out profiles for a user or persona. They distill your knowledge into a single source of truth. An empathy map can help you summarize and analyze qualitative research such as survey responses and interview transcripts. By putting this information on a single page, you can uncover gaps in your knowledge and figure out how to fill them. Empathy maps are easy-to-use and digestible methods to illustrate user attitudes and behaviors.
The 4 elements of an empathy map
Empathy maps are divided up into four quadrants.
1. Says
The Says quadrant records what a user says during an interview. Try to capture exact quotes, such as, “I use this product every day because it helps me streamline my workflow.”
2. Thinks
In contrast, the Thinks quadrant summarizes what the user is thinking throughout the experience. Based on your qualitative research, ask yourself what occupies the user’s thoughts, what matters to them, and what challenges they’re facing. The key here is to uncover the things they might be too shy or reluctant to share. For example, “This feature is really irritating.”
3. Does
Like the name implies, the Does quadrant captures the actions the user takes. For example, if you’re watching a user interact with a product, you could record the following: “Keeps refreshing the page.”
4. Feels
The Feels quadrant records user emotions. What worries them? What excites them? For example, “The user is excited about the price point. The user is worried that this is too hard to use.”
Create your own
Miro is the perfect workspace to create and share your empathy map. Get started by selecting this empathy map template. Then fill the four quadrants discussed above and brainstorm different points to add to each section via sticky notes based on the initial customer statement. Or, if you wish, you can create your own empathy map example from scratch, using our diagramming and collaborative features.
Why are empathy maps important?
Empathy maps are important because they give designers an avenue into the mind of the customer and help them empathize with their experience, desires, and needs. They’re also useful for taking insights you gain from user research, digging deeper, and applying them to find concrete solutions.
How do you use persona empathy mapping?
To create an empathy map, start with a direct statement from a customer gleaned from user interviews or direct feedback. From there, you create a constellation of thoughts, feelings, and actions that underly the customer’s statement and help you understand why they made the statement and what their underlying motivations are.
How do I create and use an empathy map of my target audience?
You can create an empathy map by conducting user interviews and filling the empathy map template collecting data about how your customers feel about either your product or service. Ideally, it would be best to do an empathy map with your target audience to have data about who they are and how they interact with your product. People use the empathy map to improve product features and discover where the product or service falls short.
Get started with this template right now.
Bang for the Buck Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
The name pretty much says it—this Agile framework is all about helping you maximize efficiency by powering collaboration between product managers and dev teams. Together you can go over each to-do on the project agenda and evaluate them in terms of costs and benefits. That way you can prioritize tasks based on how much bang for your buck they deliver. This template is great for teams and organizations that want to make a strategic plan to tackle an upcoming sprint.
A3 Report Template
Works best for:
Product, Strategy and Planning
The A3 report template is a carefully designed tool that provides teams with a structured and visual methodology to tackle challenges. It divides the problem-solving process into background, current context, data analysis, and implementation plans, ensuring a comprehensive approach to each issue. One of the major advantages of this template is its "Data Analysis" section, which enables teams to delve deeply into concrete insights and trends. This data-driven approach ensures that all recommendations and actions are based on real, tangible evidence rather than just intuition, leading to more effective and strategic decision-making.
Prune the Product Tree Template
Works best for:
Design, Desk Research, Product Management
Prune the Product Tree (also known as the product tree game or the product tree prioritization framework) is a visual tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize product feature requests. The tree represents a product roadmap and helps your team think about how to grow and shape your product or service by gamifying feedback-gathering from customers and stakeholders. A typical product tree has four symbolic features: the trunk, which represents the existing product features your team is building; the branches, each of which represents a product or system function; roots, which are technical requirements or infrastructure; and leaves, which are new ideas for product features.
Thematic Roadmapping (Vision & Strategy)
Works best for:
Roadmap, Planning, Mapping
The Thematic Roadmapping (Vision & Strategy) template empowers organizations to align their vision with actionable strategies. By identifying key themes and strategic objectives, teams can develop a roadmap that guides decision-making and resource allocation. This template facilitates cross-functional collaboration and ensures that initiatives are aligned with overarching goals, leading to more focused and impactful execution.
Project - Timeline & Key Infos
Works best for:
Agile, Project Management
The Project - Timeline & Key Infos template provides a visual framework for planning and tracking project timelines, milestones, and key information. It enables teams to align on project objectives, allocate resources, and monitor progress effectively. With customizable timelines and informative dashboards, this template empowers project managers and stakeholders to stay organized and informed throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring successful delivery within scope, time, and budget constraints.
Concept Map Template
Works best for:
Education, Mapping, Brainstorming
Use the concept map template to create new ideas, structure your thoughts, and bring your innovations to life. It allows you to explore connections between concepts and let your creativity flow in an organized format. As a result, you’re able to visualize how to bring your new ideas to reality and how various concepts relate to each other.