Day Twenty-One: Creating an empathy map

So you go into the field, gather a bunch of data…then what?

In most cases you would already have a plan. You would have used a consultative sales approach to align perfectly with your clients needs, created a research protocol which aligns with those needs, and a plan for analysis to use each piece of data collected during research as efficiently as possible. Sometimes that perfect plan just doesn’t happen so perfectly. Client needs can change throughout a project and once in a while you just have to find a way to be more flexible. I have found that creating empathy maps are a great way to jump start analysis, and can work as a framework for research review workshops. I will also usually do a quick empathy map with my clients during the debrief of each research session.

An empathy map is a framework that focuses on what your users say, do, think, and believe. It is a way to quickly organize the data that you have gathered and start to articulate the assumptions that you and your team made in the field. The design can be a simple grid or something fancy with a photo of your user in the center. The goal is to fill in each quadrant. You can make one for every user, or start to create user typologies (and eventually personas) by combining similar users.  This  project is best done in a group, so grab some people who were in the field hopefully with diverging view points and a pack of post-its and get to work!

Say- What were the key quotes and phrases that stuck out to you? If you have a hard time getting started, try to focus on challenges and go from there. If time and budget allow, I suggest having all of your interviews transcribed to speed up the quote finding process.

Do- What were the things that they did or the techniques that they demonstrated? What workflows are they currently using? How were these similar or different from what you expected?

For say and do you should be able to pull quotes, photos, and video add depth.

Think- What did your user believe or think? This can be a little bit trickier and involve reading between the lines. In some cases a user will tell you exactly what they think, but most of the time you will have to extrapolate based on the other explicit things you learned.

Feel- What emotions will impact your user while they are purchasing and using your product or service. This is another tricky area because it also involves inference, but it is important to be empathetic of your users feelings and emotional needs.

For think and feel you may be able to find quotes, photos, and video, but you may have to rely on your teams ability to “read between the line”

What next?

Now that you have an empathy map (or hopefully multiple empathy maps) you can start to generate ideas. You will notice that the left side of this map is more concrete. It is focused on the use and usability challenges that a future customer or user might have. Start to look at these needs and see how your product or service might alleviate some of these challenges.

If you look at the right side of the map you will notice that the concepts are more abstract. These are the needs that connect to your user at a more visceral and emotional level. Understanding and fulfilling the needs on the right hand side of the model will help you build a product, service or brand that is truly valuable to your target market.

Comments

[Ana Pereira]

You can now do your Empathy Maps with Personas for IPAD: http://bit.ly/RjFWrp