Empathy Mapping
What is it? An empathy map is a visualization of trusted data used to express the understanding of a prospect, customer, or other persona. The process of collecting the data is called empathy mapping. The output, an empathy map, makes this data easy to share with others and ensures we are considering multiple dimensions of the people we seek to understand.
The map typically contains four quadrants: Think, Feel, Say and Do. Together they provide an overview of the audiences’ experience of a product, situation or concept oftentimes revealing differences in what people “say and do” and “think and feel”. Maps can reflect an individual's point of view or can be an aggregated representation of multiple people.
NOTE: “Think, Feel, Say and Do” represent one approach to empathy mapping. Other frameworks include “See and Hear”, or put the model in the past tense “Thought, Felt, Said and Did”, and other variations.
When is it best used? Empathy mapping is best used when trying to understand an audience's experiences, needs, or perceptions on a topic. It can be the foundation of innovation, design, concept development, content creation, and more. In every context the data should be freshly collected from the audience of interest and not based on hypotheses or assumptions. If you start from hypotheses and assumptions, then these should be validated with fresh data from the intended audience before taking action based on the Empathy Map.
What does it entail? It starts with collecting new data, or plotting existing data, against the four (or six) aspects, usually one person per map. Eventually these individual maps can be merged to create a collective view of an audience type, holistically, or to inform a persona, a journey map or another goal.
Interchangeable term: N/A
Use in a sentence: Empathy mapping will inform our messaging to ensure it resonates with our customers in meaningful ways.
Related terms: Persona, journey mapping, customer experience mapping, stakeholder mapping, emotional intelligence/EQ, projective technique
Visual: Yes
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