Empathy map

Label: Research Phase

This popular tool is a matrix split into 4 quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels), with the user or persona in the middle.

The Empathy map session will provide a glance into who a user is and their perspective.

The “Says” quadrant will capture what the user says out loud in an interview, on social media or elsewhere.
The “Thinks” quadrant captures what the user thinks but maybe don’t want to say. This quadrant should be closely analyzed with the “Does” quadrant. Ask yourself: What matters to the user? What do they worry about?
The “Does” quadrant captures their actions.
The “Feels” quadrant captures the user’s emotional state: What is the user excited about? How does the user feel about the experience? What do they fear? You will be describing emotions and how these emotions affect their decisions.

Steps:

STEP 1

Define your customer / persona

Make sure you have a persona in mind before starting this exercise. If you don’t yet have one, create one using our “Personas” tool, or have a pre-defined persona in mind. You may add a link to the persona on the board.

Before proceeding, you should know basic information about the target: such as Age, Sex, Lifestyle, Hobbies, Status, Education, Location, Interest, Groups, etc.

STEP 2

Find information about your customer / persona

Start by finding information online (the easiest way to gather data quickly). Write down a number of places where your customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data.

Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, etc.

STEP 3

Define your customer / persona

An empathy map is an easy and visual matrix that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviors and attitudes. It is a useful tool to help teams better understand their users.

Empathy maps have four elements:

What does she/he SEE? What is she/he finding in her/his daily routine? What is she/he experiencing? Maybe people, activities, or things.
What does she/he DO and SAY? What are her/his behaviors?
What does she HEAR? What is the user hearing and how is it influencing her/him?
What things impact her/his thinking? —not superfluous information streams. Influencers should focus on the people, things, or places that influence how the user acts.

Get access to this tool for free inside @Nova.

Nova is a collaboration and productivity platform that leverages intelligent technology to help teams work together while coordinating the work for you – so teams can share their knowledge and get things done efficiently. Unlike other platforms – Nova helps organize work by goals, people and deadlines and includes tools like whiteboards, tasks and documents to get things done in the same space.

Nova was Co-founded by Ro Fernandez so includes all our tools.

Here is an overview. Nova includes a collaborative space, a template, a video/voice call, a trackable step-by-step process, an intelligent report, and more.