8 tips for creating empathy maps
When done right, empathy maps can help you deliver standout user experiences that boost your bottom line. In fact, Forrester research found that frictionless UX design could raise customer conversion rates up to 400%.
There's also strong evidence that customer-centricity pays off in speed and financial performance. Pragmatic Marketing found that companies focused on user needs were twice as fast at getting new products to market. And McKinsey research reveals that improving the customer experience increased sales revenues by 2% to 7% and profitability by 1% to 2%. The key to this success is to take a journey-based approach that focuses on what matters most to your customers, so you can direct your design and delivery efforts where they will have the biggest impact.
Use the following tips to get the biggest ROI from your empathy maps:
1. Define your user
Before you make an empathy map online, determine who your core user is. You'll also need to determine if you're designing for a single user or aggregating research to show a segment of your user base.
Next, add a concrete identifier at the center of the map. This could be a name, role, or even a photo to reinforce that you're mapping a real person rather than an abstract user. Note that empathy mapping may be done for a group of people or for a specific individual.
2. Start with "says and does"
This quadrant is the easiest to fill out because it uses primary sources for the information. There's no guesswork here. From each quote and action, you can provide context and deduce thoughts and feelings.
3. Compile the research
Empathy maps need to be created after the research portion of development. Make sure that every addition to the empathy map is based on the research you've gathered, not on conjecture. You should be able to back up your empathy map with evidence.
Typically, empathy mapping occurs as a team activity. Everyone gathers for a meeting, bringing any data, insights, customer feedback, or experiences related to the persona in question. From there, separate the known, evidence-backed information from the assumed information to keep the map credible.
4. Don't get too attached
Additions to the empathy map aren't set in stone, and members of your team may offer input that alters points in your map. Luckily, Lucid's AI capabilities enable you to efficiently sort and summarize those sticky notes. Within Lucid, you can also keep the conversation moving by tagging teammates for quick commentary right on the canvas.
5. Refine
If you want to add additional sections to your empathy map, go for it. Feel free to add illustrations, color-coding, goals, or anything else that might improve your design.
Also, don't worry about an empathy map being perfect—humans are complex and subject to change. Your empathy map can evolve as your users' needs change.
One practical refinement is to add a simple "pain vs. gain" area beneath the quadrants so the team can translate observations into what users are trying to avoid and what they hope to achieve.
6. Analyze the map
Once you've filled out the information on the empathy map, it’s time to analyze and discuss the pains users may be trying to solve when using your product. What do they have to gain when they do? An easy way to do this is to fill in the blanks in the sentence, "They need a way to __ because __." Those "need" statements are especially useful as hypotheses: They're concrete enough to guide prioritization now and specific enough to validate (or disprove) with additional research later. Pain and gain are the most important sections of your empathy map. They serve as a sort of hypothesis that you can use to make decisions during development and further test with thorough persona research.
7. Keep it simple
Remember that you're only analyzing your users as it relates to your product. Your user may have difficulty with public speaking, but that doesn't have any relevance to the calendar app you're building. Keeping that in mind can help empathy mapping feel less overwhelming.
If the team gets stuck, use a small set of prompts to keep brainstorming focused on the product context: day-to-day reality, worries, aspirations, environment, and social influence. As team members share their thoughts, the leader may ask questions to extract deeper insights about the persona.
And if your group is still generating surface-level notes, try a quick role-play to get unstuck and uncover more realistic language and reactions.
8. Reference
An empathy map shouldn't be a solo project. Consult various stakeholders and members of your team as you build the empathy map. Once your empathy map is in a good place, check in with your team. Do they understand your users? Do they actually empathize with your users? Do they seem excited to create something that can add value? If not, then go back to the drawing board and refine until everyone is on the same page.
Because empathy maps are lightweight, they're also easy to save and reuse—especially when you treat them as project documentation you can reference at the start of the next initiative.
