What is a user empathy map?

An empathy map is a collaborative visualization that captures what you know about a user — what they say, think, do, and feel. It was popularized by Dave Gray at XPLANE and has become a staple in design thinking workshops, UX research debriefs, and product strategy sessions.

The map is divided into four quadrants — Says, Thinks, Does, Feels — with the user at the center. Some versions add Pains and Gains at the bottom, which makes the tool more actionable for product teams trying to decide what to build next. The purpose is not to create a research artifact that sits in a folder. It is to force your team to synthesize user data into a shared mental model that informs decisions.

When to use an empathy map

Empathy maps are most useful when your team is working with secondhand user data — interviews someone else conducted, survey results from another department, or assumptions that have never been validated. They are the bridge between raw research data and actionable insight.

• After user interviews. The most common use case. Run 5-8 interviews, then fill out an empathy map together to synthesize patterns. The process of deciding what goes in each quadrant reveals gaps in your understanding.
• During persona creation. An empathy map adds emotional depth to a user persona. The persona tells you who the user is. The empathy map tells you how they experience the problem.
• Before a product sprint. When the team is about to build something, an empathy map exercise takes 20 minutes and forces everyone to agree on what the user actually needs — not what the loudest voice in the room assumes they need.
• Onboarding new team members. Instead of handing new hires a 40-page research deck, share an empathy map for each core user segment. They can internalize the user perspective in under 5 minutes.
• After a customer churn spike. When users leave and you are not sure why, mapping what they were saying, thinking, doing, and feeling in the weeks before churn reveals patterns that NPS scores miss.

How to fill out each quadrant

Says: Direct quotes from user interviews, support tickets, reviews, and survey responses. Use their exact words, not your interpretation. “I hate switching between three tools to send a deliverable” is more useful than “user dislikes tool fragmentation.”

Thinks: What the user believes but might not say out loud. This quadrant requires inference. If a user says “I check my analytics dashboard first thing every morning,” they might think “I am worried about my metrics slipping.” The Thinks quadrant is where assumptions live — label them explicitly so the team can validate later.

Does: Observable behaviors and actions. How does the user interact with your product? What workarounds have they built? What tools do they switch between? This quadrant should be grounded in data — session recordings, analytics events, support ticket patterns — not guesses.

Feels: The emotional dimension. Frustration, anxiety, confidence, excitement. Emotions drive decisions more than logic, especially in B2B buying where stakeholders feel the pressure of making the right choice for their team. Look for emotional language in user interviews: “I was nervous about presenting this to the client” or “I finally felt like I had it under control.”

Pains: What obstacles, frustrations, or fears stand between the user and their goal? These are not just product friction points — they include organizational politics, budget constraints, skill gaps, and time pressure.

Gains: What does success look like for this user? What would make their day easier? What do they aspire to? This quadrant points directly to the value proposition your product should deliver.

Empathy map vs persona vs customer journey map

These three tools complement each other but serve different purposes:

• Empathy map — Captures what a user thinks, feels, says, and does at a single point in time. Best for building emotional understanding of one user segment. Quick to create (20-30 minutes in a workshop).
• User persona — A composite profile of a user segment including demographics, goals, frustrations, and behavioral patterns. Best for aligning teams around who they are building for. Takes longer (requires research synthesis).
• Customer journey map — Visualizes the user’s experience across time and touchpoints. Best for identifying where the experience breaks down. Most complex to create (requires mapping multiple stages and channels).

The typical workflow: start with empathy maps from raw research, build personas from the patterns, then map the journey using the personas as your lens. You can also go straight from empathy maps to journey maps if you already have clear personas in place.

Common empathy mapping mistakes

• Filling it out alone. An empathy map is a team exercise. When one person fills it out, it becomes their interpretation of the user, not a shared understanding. Run it as a workshop with sticky notes (physical or digital) so everyone contributes their perspective.
• Mixing up Says and Thinks. Says is verbatim — actual words from actual users. Thinks is inference — what you believe the user is thinking based on their behavior. Blurring these leads to false confidence in unvalidated assumptions.
• Making it too broad. One empathy map per user segment, not one for “all users.” If your product serves agencies and enterprise teams, those are two separate empathy maps with different emotional landscapes.
• Treating it as a one-time exercise. Your understanding of users evolves. Revisit empathy maps quarterly, especially after major product changes, new market entries, or significant shifts in your customer base.
• Not connecting it to decisions. The empathy map is not a wall decoration. Every insight should point to a product decision, messaging change, or research follow-up. If nothing changes after the exercise, you did it for show.

How to Facilitate an Empathy Mapping Session

An empathy map is only as good as the session that produces it. A poorly facilitated workshop creates a document full of assumptions that the team mistakes for evidence. Here is how to run an empathy mapping session that produces actionable insights.

Preparation: gather your evidence first

Do not facilitate an empathy mapping session from imagination. Before the workshop, collect user research artifacts: interview transcripts, support ticket summaries, usability test recordings, survey responses, and direct user quotes. Print or display these during the session. The best empathy maps are built from evidence, not guesses. If you do not have any user research, run five to seven user interviews first. An empathy map built on zero data is fiction.

Session structure: 15 minutes per quadrant

Set a timer. Give the team 15 minutes per quadrant (Says, Thinks, Does, Feels) with five minutes between each for discussion. Start with Says because it anchors the exercise in real user language. Move to Does next because observable behavior is concrete. Then tackle Thinks and Feels, which require more interpretation. This sequence builds from evidence toward inference rather than starting with speculation.

Use sticky notes (physical or digital). Each participant writes independently for the first 10 minutes, then the group discusses and clusters for the remaining 5. This prevents the loudest voice from dominating. Aim for 8 to 12 items per quadrant. If a quadrant has fewer than 5 items, your team either lacks data about that dimension or is self-censoring.

Common facilitation mistakes

The facilitator should not contribute content. Your job is to keep the group focused, enforce time limits, and ask probing questions when entries are too vague. “They feel frustrated” is not useful. “They feel frustrated when they cannot find the export button after 30 seconds” is specific enough to act on. Push the team from generalizations to specifics by asking “when exactly?” and “can you give me a quote?” for every entry.

Another common mistake is mixing user segments in one session. If your product serves both marketing managers and agency owners, run separate empathy maps for each. Blending them into one map creates a fictional composite that describes no one accurately.

Synthesizing findings into design decisions

After the session, step back and look for patterns across quadrants. Where does what users say conflict with what they do? Those contradictions reveal the most valuable design opportunities. Where do emotions cluster around frustration or anxiety? Those are the moments your product needs to resolve. Assign each insight an owner and a follow-up action (design change, research question, messaging update). An empathy map that does not result in at least three concrete next steps was a wasted exercise.

Share the completed empathy map with your broader team as a live link so it stays visible beyond the workshop. Update it as you learn more about your users through ongoing research, support conversations, and analytics. The empathy map should be a living reference in your workspace, not a PDF that gets filed away after the session. Pair it with a user persona for the full picture, or map the journey across touchpoints with a customer journey map.

Empathy map FAQ

How long does it take to create an empathy map?

20-30 minutes in a facilitated workshop with the right data. If you are starting from scratch without any user research, plan an extra hour for gathering quotes and behavioral data from support tickets, reviews, and analytics.

Do I need user research before making an empathy map?

Ideally yes — empathy maps are meant to synthesize real data. But an assumption-based empathy map still has value as long as you label every entry as “assumed” and plan to validate. Just do not present assumptions as facts to stakeholders.

How many empathy maps should I create?

One per distinct user segment. If you have three personas, you need three empathy maps. Creating one map for “all users” defeats the purpose — different users have different emotional realities.

What is the difference between an empathy map and an affinity diagram?

An affinity diagram clusters raw data into themes (any themes). An empathy map clusters data into specific quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, Feels). An affinity diagram is broader and more flexible. An empathy map is structured and forces you to consider the emotional dimension specifically.

See how Xtensio compares

Wondering whether Xtensio is the right fit for your team? See how it stacks up:

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BONUS: Read the user persona how-to guide.