###### tags: `reading`

# Empathy mapping: the first step in design thinking

Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data

#### Summary
- Remove bias from our designs and align the team on a single, shared understanding of the user
- Discover weaknesses in our research
- Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not even be aware of Understand what drives users’ behaviors
- Guide us towards meaningful innovation

## Definition
A collaborative visualization user to articulate that we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making

## Format

- Traditional empathy map
- who is the user
- **Not** chronological or sequential

**Say**: what users say in an interview

**Think**: what users are thinking throughout the experience
- What occupies users' thoughts?
- What matters to the user
- What users think may not be vocalize
- Are they unsure, being too polite, afraid to tell?

**Does**: the behaviors that users physically do. e.g. refreshes page several times, shops around to compare prices

**Feels**: emotional state. e.g. impatient, confused, worried

## One user vs. multiple-users empathy maps
- Aggregated empathy maps
- Combining similar individual user maps
- The first step to create personas

## Why user empathy maps

Use empathy maps from the begining of the design process

- **Capture who a user or persona is**
Distill and categorize knowledge of the user into one place
- Categorize qualitative research
- Discover gaps in current knowledge and indentify required research. Sparse empathy maps indicates that more research needs to be done
- Create personas by aligning and grouping empathy maps

- **Communicate a user or persona to others**
A quick and digestible way to illustrate user attitudes/ behaviors. Prevent bias or unfounded assuptions


## Process of creating an empathy map

1. **Define scope and goals**
- What user or persona will you map
- Desine your primary purpose for empathy mapping

2. **Gather materials**
- markers, whiteboards, sticky notes
- make it easy to share with the team

3. **Collect research**
- Gather the research you will be using to fuel your empathy map. Qualitative inputs for empathy maps: user interviews, field studies, diary studies, listening sessions, or qualitative surveys.

4. **Individually generate sticky notes for each quadrant**

5. **Converge to cluster and synthesize**
- name the clusters
- Is there any outliers?
- What themes are repeated?
- Is there any understanding gap?

6. Polish and plan