When different teams often talk to different parts of the customer journey, misaligned assumptions start. For instance, your marketing team might focus on surveys or campaign data and assume customers just want more discounts. Your product team believes it’s a feature issue, and customer support says it’s a communication gap, with each team drawing limited conclusions. Empathy maps bring all these pieces together into one shared view of the user—what they say, think, do, and feel.
A well-researched empathy map can spark clarity in team decisions, develop more focused strategies and drive better outcomes. In fact, teams that prioritize empathy and user-centric thinking are 60% more likely to outperform their competitors financially.
However, there is a structured process to draw empathy maps and smartly convert all customer insights into pure nuggets of user behavior. In this article, we will understand that process in detail.
What are empathy maps?
An empathy map is a simple, collaborative tool used to visualize user attitudes and behaviors. Rather than relying on fragmented assumptions or indirect feedback, it consolidates what is truly known about the user into a single, shared reference point. This shared understanding acts as a reliable source for your teams to make informed decisions and build products and services, ensuring an ongoing product market fit (PMF).
An empathy map is a square divided into four key sections: Says, Thinks, Does and Feels, with the user or customer placed right at the center. Each section reflects a different angle of the user’s experience.
Here is a typical empathy map template for your reference:
Let’s break down each component of this empathy map template.
Says
This section captures what your users say out loud during interviews, surveys or support calls. These are direct quotes with clear clues into their pain points, needs and desires.
For example, a user might say,
- “This feature is too complicated.”
- “I wish there were a quicker way to get updates.”
- “I am feeling confused from this point onwards.”
These insights can directly shape how you improve your product or service.
Thinks
This quadrant captures what the user is thinking but not saying. These are internal thoughts, concerns or motivations that don’t always make it to the surface.
For instance, your users might be wondering,
- “Will this work the way I need it to?”
- “I don’t trust this brand fully yet.”
This section often uncovers silent barriers or hesitations that can influence their decisions. It pushes you to look beyond the obvious and design with empathy.
Does
The ‘Does’ quadrant encloses what your users do when they interact with your brand. This section tracks their behavior, like
- What actions do they take?
- How do they use your product?
- Where do they drop off?
Sometimes, what people do can be very different from what they say.
For example, a user might say they love your website, but they rarely use key features. This quadrant captures those friction points and opportunities for improvement.
Feels
The ‘Feels’ quadrant is your users’ emotional state throughout their journey with your brand, before, during and after interaction. The section captures both negative and positive emotions, such as:
- Frustration when a feature doesn’t work.
- Relief when a task is completed smoothly.
- Joy when they find what they were looking for.
Here is a typical empathy map example of a customer looking to buy a TV at a store.
You will face many instances where users taking positive actions share negative quotes or emotions. This is when you will find empathy maps really helpful. Let’s understand better.
Importance of an empathy map in design thinking
Empathy maps should be used to get a clear picture of your users’ experiences, pain points and expectations before you build anything. An early adoption of the empathy map in design thinking has numerous benefits for the organization.
Empower data-driven design
Empathy maps push you to go beyond gut feelings and work on what users want. For example, say you’re building a new feature for your product. With a user empathy map, you may discover that they’re frustrated with a completely different part of the experience, one you hadn’t even considered. That clarity can help you drive innovation and differentiation.
Keeps teams on the same page
When teams work in silos, they fail to paint a complete picture of user personas. One team may think users love a feature, while another hears complaints about it. Empathy maps bring everyone together with a shared understanding. Once created, empathy maps act as a common source of information for your entire team. Teams work in sync without any bias or unfounded assumptions.
Uncover hidden user behaviors
Many users go through a mixed bag of emotions, such as confusion, stress, trust and joy, while interacting with your product or service. These feelings shape their actions towards your brand in the future. Empathy maps bring these emotions to the surface so you can address them early in your design process.
Let’s say users are hesitant to complete a signup form. On the surface, it might look like a technical issue. But an empathy map might reveal that users think your form looks suspicious or feel anxious about sharing personal information.
Simplifies complex user needs
Empathy maps simplify complex user research into a format anyone can understand and act on. A simple visual summary is enough to educate your teams on what your users need, want and struggle with. This understanding for the team from the beginning of the project is very important to avoid rework, reduce waste and build solutions that actually stick.
Now that you understand why user empathy maps matter, let’s walk through how to actually create one.
How to create an empathy map: A step-by-step guide
Traditional empathy maps are split into four quadrants surrounding the user in the middle. While they are used to record a comprehensive display of subjects, they do not have a chronological or sequential component. You can go through the following steps to create a useful empathy map:
Step 1: Set a clear focus
First, plan your user persona. A user persona is a semi-fictional character that represents a segment of your target audience based on research and data. For example, if you’re designing a product for busy professionals, your user persona might be “Sarah,” a 35-year-old project manager who struggles to manage time effectively.
However, that’s not all.
Are you going to map a real user or a user persona based on patterns from your research? It is advisable to go for any one to avoid mixing different user behaviours or emotions. If you’re working with multiple personas, create a separate empathy map for each one.
Next, define the primary purpose of this empathy map.
- Are you doing it to align your team on user experience?
- Are you trying to pull insights from interviews?
- Set aside sufficient time to map multiple user interviews.
Step 2: Get your materials ready
Your setup depends on how you’ll be working. If it’s a group activity, grab a large whiteboard, sticky notes, markers, anything easy to see and move around. If you’re doing this digitally, use a tool like Miro or FigJam. The aim should be to make it a collaborative process with a scope to revisit later.
Step 3: Gather real user data
Empathy mapping is a qualitative process. So, you’ll need qualitative data collected through:
- User interviews
- Feedback sessions
- Observations or field studies
- Diary studies or open-ended surveys
Don’t aim for a large sample size in the beginning. Start collecting insights from a handful of conversations with actual users.
However, you can streamline the hectic manual process of feedback collection by using specialized Product Roadmap Tools. This way, you can collect feedback, receive votes on feature requests and eliminate duplicate entries.
Step 4: Fill in all four quadrants
Let each individual digest the data and write key findings on sticky notes (or digital equivalents) that align with the four quadrants. Encourage everyone to go through this step individually first. That way, you’ll avoid groupthink and gather more diverse insights.
Step 5: Cluster and look for patterns
Once all the sticky notes are up, group similar ideas together and give each group a name, like “needs guidance” or “seeks validation.” Don’t force things into neat boxes. It’s okay if some ideas feel messy or overlap.
Ask yourselves:
- What themes keep coming up?
- Are any emotions showing across all quadrants?
- Are there outliers that don’t fit anywhere, but still matter?
- What are we still unsure about?
At this stage, a combined effort to understand patterns leads to creating a shared view of the user.
Step 6: Refine and use your empathy map
Once you’ve clustered the data, it’s time to polish the map and digitize the output for sharing. Before sharing, make sure to include the following, if you’re planning to revisit it later:
- The name or type of user you’re mapping
- The date and version (so you can track updates)
- Any big gaps or questions that need more research
If your team needs more context, you could add quadrants like “Goals” or “Pain Points.”
Check out this empathy map example shown below.
Just keep it simple enough for anyone to understand at a glance.
Remember that it’s not a one-time task. As you gather more feedback or user behaviour changes, update the map to stay in tune with what matters most.
Conclusion
Empathy maps are very useful for understanding your users. By building empathy with your end users, you become good at making stronger product decisions. Whether you’re building something new or improving what’s already there, empathy maps help you remove bias from your designs and discover weaknesses in your research. While the process is straightforward, it takes some effort to collect quality feedback from different sources.
FAQs
1. What are the pros and cons of empathy mapping?
Empathy mapping helps teams understand users deeply, align on insights and improve decisions. But if it’s based on guesswork or limited input, it can reinforce assumptions instead of truths. Reliable user research is key to getting real value.
2. What is empathy map vs persona map?
An empathy map zooms in on a user’s thoughts, feelings, actions and words in a specific moment. A persona map gives a broader profile — demographics, goals and habits. Empathy maps are more emotional and situational, while personas are more general.
3. What is the purpose of an empathy map in SAFe?
In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), an empathy map helps product and agile teams align around user needs. It supports human-centered thinking, especially during design and planning, to ensure solutions are built around what real users actually care about.
4. Why is an empathy map important for businesses?
Empathy maps help businesses build products and services people actually want. They bring teams together around real user needs, reduce guesswork and improve decision-making. When you understand users better, you build better — and smarter — solutions that grow your business.
5. Can empathy maps be used for both B2C and B2B businesses?
Yes, empathy maps work for both B2C and B2B. Whether your user is a customer or a business stakeholder, understanding their needs, struggles and goals helps you build better experiences and strengthen relationships across any kind of market.
