User Empathy Map Template

What is a User Empathy Map and why create it?

Empathy Mapping is a UX design tool to visualize a user’s behavior and emotions. It’s a map of her internal world and external actions created based on research, user interviews, and observations. Taking the time to go through the Empathy Mapping exercise helps UX design teams develop empathy for who they are designing for. Always good to keep in mind when defining priorities, engineering front, and back-end functionalities, and making aesthetic choices.  

The User Empathy map (or UX Empathy Map) is divided into 6 sections going from a user’s inner world to their outer world.

Thoughts and Feelings cover what’s on the inside
Actions and Quotes cover easily observable behavior. 
Sights are about their surroundings.
Influences are about other entities that affect a user’s thoughts and actions.
Pains and Gains open it up to think about this persona’s relationship to your product or services.

We created an easily editable User Empathy Map template with guiding text to help you complete each part. Simply click and edit the text modules to add your own insights.

There is also a simpler version of the Empathy Map which is made up of four parts.

The next natural step after empathy mapping is to construct more detailed Personas, and take it further by developing Customer Journey Maps. Both available among Xtensio’s easily editable living document templates for Product Management and Design.