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The Empathy Map

The Empathy Map is a tool to help understand the perspectives of those affected by a project. It involves creating profiles of hypothetical users and considering what they see, say, do, think, and feel. Developing empathy maps for varied users can improve understanding of their experiences. The exercise takes 30 minutes and involves answering questions from the perspective of a named user with specific characteristics. Insights from empathy maps can help refine a project's engagement, design, and delivery to build trust with stakeholders.

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Pankaj Vasudeva
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33 views

The Empathy Map

The Empathy Map is a tool to help understand the perspectives of those affected by a project. It involves creating profiles of hypothetical users and considering what they see, say, do, think, and feel. Developing empathy maps for varied users can improve understanding of their experiences. The exercise takes 30 minutes and involves answering questions from the perspective of a named user with specific characteristics. Insights from empathy maps can help refine a project's engagement, design, and delivery to build trust with stakeholders.

Uploaded by

Pankaj Vasudeva
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Empathy Map

EXERCISE DESCRIPTION:
Empathy is the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand
their lives, and start to solve problems from their perspectives. The
Empathy Map is a tool intended to help you to consider the perspectives
of those who your project serves or affects. Empathy maps can be
created about hypothetical users or customers to better focus on their
experience of the project. Empathy maps can be completed individuals
or as a team. “In order to get to new
solutions, you have to get to
Developing empathy maps for varied and contrasting hypothetical users
know different people,
can really round out your understanding of user experience and help
different scenarios, and
your team to consider the many forces around your users and customers
different places.”
that affect their experiences. Post the empathy maps where the team —Emi Kolawole, Editor-in-Residence,
can see them daily and, when you can, invite real live stakeholders to Stanford University d.school
complete first-person empathy maps!

EXERCISE HOW-TO:
Time required: 30 minutes
Instructions:
1. Choose a name, sex and age for this person. Do they have a job, a family or something else distinctive
about their daily life? Jot these characteristics down on the edge of the map. Stanford University d.school
2. Put yourself in that person's shoes and think about their experience of your project:
a. What are they seeing?
b. What are they saying?
c. What are they doing?
d. What are they thinking?
e. What are they feeling?
3. Answer all six questions on the map in as much detail as you can imagine.
4. After you have completed your empathy map, list:
a. 3 things that this person wants; and,
b. 3 obstacles to those desires.

EXERCISE DEBRIEF:
Possible debrief questions:
 How do we need to refine the engagement, design or delivery of our work based upon the insights
generated from our empathy map?
 What’s have we learned here that can help us build, and retain, trust among those involved?

www.tamarackcommunity.ca
The Empathy Map Worksheet

NOTES:
This person’s top 3 wants are: 3 obstacles to this person’s desires are:

1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

www.tamarackcommunity.ca

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