EM- Cheetsheet

Define your primary purpose for empathy mapping

Before creating an empathy map, you should have a clear understanding of the importance of having one. There are two typical cases where you need to create a map: for a general understanding of your users, or for understanding a specific task or situation. For example, if you want to understand a particular user’s behavior ━ e.g. a certain kind of buying decision ━ you’ll need to create a task-based empathy map or an empathy map based on a single decision.

Conduct research

The best empathy maps are drawn from real data. Gather reports from user interviews, diary studies, or qualitative surveys. Once you have collected the necessary information, ask each team member who will participate in empathy mapping to read through the research individually prior to the session. Once all team members are familiar with the research data, you can proceed with the mapping process.

Tip: The most valuable ideas usually come from time spent listening to users. Start your project by interviewing and observing current and potential users to understand their pain points and aspirations better.

Don’t do it alone

While it’s possible to create an empathy map alone, it’s better to do it in a team. Empathic design is a team sport, and it’s essential that each team member thinks about the user when crafting a product. Creating empathy maps is a great team exercise that makes team members gather together and synthesize information about users. Invite all core product team members ━ product managers, designers, developers, marketers ━ to the session.

Tip: Invite stakeholders to the session too. Having stakeholders there during mapping sessions is beneficial for two reasons. First, it’s possible to create richer empathy maps by balancing business goals and users’ needs. Second, it’s possible to ensure that the product team and stakeholders are on the same page.

Make sure you will have enough time for the session

While the actual session shouldn’t take too long ━ usually about 30-60 minutes ━ it’s better to give yourself extra time and book a room for an additional 30 minutes. You’ll need 15 minutes before the session to make sure that the place is ready with materials such as a whiteboard, sticky notes, and markers. Following the meeting, you’ll need 15 minutes to summarize all the findings.

Tip: Print out any relevant information for the project that can serve as cues during the session. Having this information printed will prevent team members from using digital devices during the meeting.

Invite an experienced moderator to the session

A moderator is a person responsible for facilitating a working session. The role of a moderator consists of asking questions that will make team members brainstorm user characteristics. An experienced moderator is a person who:

Doesn’t ask leading questions. Leading questions are questions that frame the participant’s mind around a particular answer. This often happens when a part of the answer is accidentally contained in the moderator’s question or the moderator subconsciously directs the participant to answer in a certain way by inserting their own opinions into the questions they’re asking.

Doesn’t express their own opinion. Moderators should always control their reactions.

Makes sure everyone participates in the activity.

Five things to do during and after the session

Always do a one-to-one mapping

Follow the rule, “one persona per map.” This means, if you have multiple personas, there should be an empathy map for each. Mixing different personas in one map won’t give you valuable insights.

Create context

Start by defining who will be the subject of the empathy map, or persona, and what they’ll do, or the goal they want to achieve. It’s worth mentioning where the subject is located when trying to accomplish that goal; for example, a tourist at the airport trying to order a taxi using a mobile app. The point of creating context is to make sure the team understands and empathizes with the subject’s situation.

Add the basic characteristics of the persona

Before you start asking questions, it’s essential to ensure the team is ready to morph into their user persona. Here are a few simple tricks that will help you get your team into the mood and make the persona feel more real:

Give the persona a name and a job title.

Fill in some personal details. You might want to draw eyes, a mouth, a nose, ears, or a hairstyle to differentiate the persona from other profiles.

Encourage team members to talk about their thoughts

After you define the essential characteristics of a persona, it’s time for the main session. The team brainstorms user characteristics by answering questions like “What are the user’s pain points when using a product?” Each team member should write their responses on post-it notes and stick them to the map. It’s essential to have the team members talk about their sticky notes as they place them on the empathy map. By asking questions, it’s possible to reach more profound insights ━ such as why team members really think the way they do ━ which can be valuable for the rest of the team.

Tip: Instead of writing directly on the map, use post-it notes and stick them in sections. Sticky notes can be easily removed, changed, or grouped. This will help you move insights around and cluster similar notes together that belong to the same quadrant. It’s also better to use colored post-it notes and assign a color to each team member. This will help improve the process and the results of mapping

Lindsay Munro - Adobe XD