How to create an empathy map

Here are five steps to creating an empathy map with your team.

Step 1: Identify users and goals

Who will your empathy map represent? Whether you’re creating a single- or multiple-user map, you need to identify the main subject. Your map should also be a stepping stone toward completing an actionable goal.

Step 2: Collect experiential data

Empathy mapping requires up-to-date qualitative data. Before mapping, determine who you want to interview, what data collection methods you need, and how you’ll organize your data. Surveys, interviews, field or diary studies, and listening sessions are the most common ways you can collect user experience data for empathy maps.

Step 3: Examine user experiences, thoughts, and feelings

Consider what your users experience on a day-to-day basis and how they respond. Their common phrasing and habits can help you understand where problems arise, plus ways to mitigate issues before they lead to lasting effects.

During this phase, consider:

Changes to your industry that may affect user experiences and behavior

Comments on social media or other platforms

A user’s biggest roadblocks and pain points

In addition, consider the internal factors that could affect your users’ decisions. Since it’s impossible to observe these factors, they need to be inferred or received directly from a user via a survey, interview, or other form of data capture. This step should examine two major categories:

Think: Understand your users’ thought processes while they interact with your brand. It’s especially important to consider what users may be thinking but are unwilling to tell you. For example:

“I’m irritated while using this tool.”

“I don’t understand what I’m doing or where I need to go.”

“This system is disorganized and difficult to use.”

Feel: In interviews, ask your users to describe what they’re feeling at the moment. Consider their pain points, what makes them frustrated, and what brings them joy. When creating your empathy map, identify these ideas as emotions with experiential context. For example:

The user feels irritated because our program loads slowly.

The user feels confused when trying to navigate our website structure.

Our system’s asset management tools allow users to feel relaxed.

Step 4: Categorize your findings and identify patterns

Using a template or starting from scratch, separate your map into quadrants to categorize what your user sees, hears, thinks and feels, and says and does.

From your collected data, ask your team to identify attitudes and behaviors. These can be written on sticky notes or added directly to your map’s template, but team members should place these observations within one of the map’s major sections. If possible, ask every team member to include at least one observation during this step.

Once you can visualize your empathy map, explore your findings by highlighting patterns. Your data may indicate common user thoughts, feelings, or actions. Identifying these patterns can help you understand your users, visualize their experiences, and adapt to their recurring needs.

Step 5: Reflect and discuss

Once your empathy map is complete, it’s time to discuss your findings. Teams can summarize their user patterns and brainstorm possible solutions to pain points during this stage.

At this point, team members may also want to present their findings to other departments and ask for additional input from outside perspectives.

Empathy maps are flexible, so consider discussing your findings regularly and updating your maps with new insights.

Empathy map vs Persona

At first glance, empathy maps and user personas can look similar—but they serve different purposes in the design process.

Personas represent broad user archetypes based on needs and patterns present across key demographics in your target audience. They often include details like goals, behaviors, and pain points, helping teams design with specific types of users in mind.

Empathy maps, on the other hand, zoom in on a user’s mindset during a particular experience. They capture what someone is thinking, feeling, saying, and doing in a given moment, helping teams build empathy and surface insights quickly.

So, should you still create an empathy map if you’ve already drafted and finalized user personas? Absolutely. Both tools are crucial for understanding and empathizing with your users’ needs. You might create an empathy map after a single interview to better understand a specific situation, while personas typically require input from multiple users to reflect shared traits and needs. Together, these two tools add depth and breadth to your understanding of your audience.

Empathy map: identify and focus on specific circumstances or perspectives; conversation-driven; focuses on details

Persona: can be applied to any stage of the user journey; research-driven; focuses on the big picture

Benefits of empathy mapping

Empathy map helps teams see the world from a user’s point of view—leading to more thoughtful, effective design decisions. When used well, they can shift how entire organizations understand and serve their users. Here’s how:

Make data more digestible. Empathy maps distill what users say, think, feel, and do into clear, actionable insights that closely consider user experience, attitudes, and behaviors.

Zoom in on real experiences. Empathy maps help teams focus on users’ lived realities, from their pain points to their emotional responses. By surfacing these moments, they bring clarity to key aspects of human-computer interaction and show where designs can better meet user needs.

Create alignment across teams. Though often created by a design or research team, empathy maps become shared tools. They can guide decisions across product, marketing, support, and beyond, from design research to implementation.

Getting Started with empathy mapping

It’s easy to think that you know your users like the back of your hand. After all, you built the product for them. But empathy maps challenge that assumption and encourage deeper listening. They can also surface product blind spots, support inclusive designs, and help teams build solutions that better reflect real user needs.

If you’re new to creating empathy maps, try using templates provided by tools like Figma, Miro, or Nielsen Norman Group. They can help you get started easily while also offering fresh perspectives and ideas.