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.
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.
Basic Persona & Empathy Map
Works best for:
Product Management
Understand your customers better with the Basic Persona & Empathy Map template. This tool helps you create detailed personas and empathy maps, providing insights into customer needs, behaviors, and pain points. Use this template to tailor your products and services to meet customer expectations more effectively. Perfect for marketing and product development teams focused on user-centered design.
The Product Storyboard
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
The Product Storyboard template enables product managers to visualize product experiences and user journeys. By mapping out key touchpoints, interactions, and scenarios, this template helps teams understand user needs and pain points. With sections for defining user personas, storyboarding user flows, and capturing feedback, it supports iterative product design and validation. This template serves as a storytelling tool for communicating product visions and guiding product development efforts towards delivering exceptional user experiences.
Festival Retrospective
Works best for:
Retrospectives, Meetings, Agile Methodology
The Festival Retrospective template offers a unique and engaging approach to retrospectives by framing the session as a festive event. It provides elements for reflecting on past experiences, celebrating achievements, and setting goals for the future. This template enables teams to foster a positive and celebratory atmosphere, encouraging open communication and collaboration. By promoting a festive spirit, the Festival Retrospective empowers teams to strengthen bonds, boost morale, and drive continuous improvement effectively.
Growth Experiments Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Desk Research, Strategic Planning
Many ambitious companies are eying the future and aiming to grow. But growth decisions can be leaps of faith that are risky and costly. That’s why growth experiments make so much sense. They offer a systematic six-step method that reveals which strategies are most effective, how they’ll affect your revenue, and how they compare to your past approaches. By helping you test out your strategies for scaling your business before you fully commit, growth experiments can save you serious time, resources, and money.
Sprint Planning with Jira Template
Works best for:
Sprint Planning, Agile
The Sprint Planning with Jira template in Miro is a powerful tool designed to streamline and enhance your sprint planning sessions. One of the key benefits of this template is its Jira integration, which saves time and effort when planning and aligning teams. By integrating directly with Jira, the template allows for seamless import and management of tasks, ensuring that all your Jira tickets are up-to-date and easily accessible within Miro. This reduces the need for manual updates and minimizes errors, making the planning process more efficient and effective.
AI-Enhanced Empathy Map
Works best for:
Market Research, Research & Design
AI Enhanced Empathy Map combines traditional empathy mapping with AI insights. This innovative template helps you gather and analyze user data, leading to more accurate and personalized user experiences. Ideal for product development teams using AI.