Understanding empathy maps

An empathy map is a structured visual canvas that captures what a customer says, thinks, does and feels in a specific situation, based on research evidence. It helps teams move from demographic labels to a shared, evidence-based understanding of real people, so that propositions, journeys and services are designed around actual needs, frustrations and expectations.

Imagine the quarterly customer review of a subscription business. The retention chart shows a rise in cancellations, and the room divides quickly. The commercial director believes that competitors are undercutting on price. The service director points to a wave of complaints about onboarding. The product director insists that the features customers ask for are already available. Each executive speaks with conviction, and each is looking at a different slice of the same customer. What the meeting lacks is not data, but a picture of the customer that everyone recognizes as true.

Do you understand the primary needs your customers seek to satisfy? What is their objective, and what frustrates them in the process? Do you know how they perceive your brand? Beyond demographic data or basic satisfaction scores, few organizations can answer these questions with evidence, yet the answers are fundamental to designing value propositions, experiences and services that resonate with the people you want to serve.

Why does understanding the customer's inner world matter to the business?

Customers do not interact with your company to consume a process. They do so to solve a problem, achieve a result or move closer to a personal or business goal. Along the way they encounter barriers, doubts and emotions that can strengthen or erode their relationship with your brand. They feel confusion when information is unclear, mistrust when expectations are not met, frustration when they must repeat data, and relief and confidence when everything works smoothly and transparently.

These feelings rarely appear in a dashboard, but they determine what happens in the dashboard. They drive whether a prospect completes a purchase, whether a customer renews, and whether a satisfied user becomes an advocate. The empathy map is a simple instrument for bringing them into the conversation. If you want to understand how the users of your product or service feel and think, not as abstract segments but as real people in concrete situations, it offers a practical way to do so.

Used well, it allows a team to visualize what customers see, hear, say, do, think and feel in a specific context. It identifies what they truly value and what generates friction or dissatisfaction. It uncovers implicit motivations, fears and expectations that traditional surveys often fail to capture. And it aligns teams around a shared, evidence-based understanding of the customer. In short, it guides the practice of using an empathy map, a tool to put yourself in your customers' shoes, so that every decision in product, service and experience design is grounded in their reality and not in internal assumptions.

What is an empathy map?

An empathy map is a structured, visual representation of what a person thinks, feels, sees, hears, says and does in a specific situation. Rather than describing the customer only through demographic data or generic labels, it helps teams capture the internal world of the user, including motivations, fears, expectations and frustrations in relation to a product, service or experience. The Nielsen Norman Group defines it as a collaborative visualization of what a team knows about a particular user, one that externalizes knowledge to create a shared understanding of user needs and to aid decision making, in its guide to empathy mapping as the first step in design thinking. Used correctly, the map becomes a bridge between quantitative data about what users do and qualitative insight about why they do it.

On a single canvas, multidisciplinary teams can consolidate findings from interviews, surveys, behavioral analytics and observation, organizing them into intuitive quadrants. This facilitates a richer conversation about the customer, reveals patterns that are not obvious in raw data, and exposes assumptions or biases that may be driving internal decisions. For organizations that want to design customer-centric strategies, the empathy map is a practical starting point. It enables product, marketing, operations and Customer Experience teams to align around a common understanding of the user, prioritize opportunities based on real pain points and desires, and make better decisions about propositions, journeys and experiences.

Most companies lack real visibility into their customer journey. 

Where does the empathy map fit in design thinking?

If we take the Design Thinking methodology as a reference, empathy is the first stage of the process. It is crucial for understanding the user, their needs, desires and pain points, so that the team can see the world through the customer's eyes. The empathy map is a tool used in this methodology to summarize the findings of that first phase as the team moves toward defining the problem. In other words, it allows us to capture in a simple way the frustrations, feelings and perceptions of the Buyer Persona, validated through data analysis. The wider discipline is described in Design Thinking and Customer Experience Design.

The relationship with personas deserves precision. The Nielsen Norman Group notes that empathy maps are not a replacement for personas. A map captures what a team knows about a segment at a moment in time, and several individual maps can be grouped into an aggregated one, which is a step toward a persona. The persona then becomes a durable reference, while the map remains a working document that is revisited as research accumulates.

Where does the empathy map come from, and how has it changed?

The empathy map was created by Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE, as a practical response to a recurring challenge in innovation and design projects. Teams had a great deal of fragmented information about their users but lacked a simple, shared way to visualize and discuss it. Gray introduced the tool in an early version of the book Gamestorming, written with Sunni Brown and James Macanufo and published by O'Reilly Media in 2010, which presents more than 80 play-based activities for collaboration and idea generation, as listed on the publisher's page for Gamestorming. He positioned it as a collaborative canvas to align diverse stakeholders quickly around a common understanding of the customer.

In its first visualization, the map placed the user at the center and organized insights around six dimensions that describe their experience and internal world. These were thinking, hearing, seeing, saying, doing and feeling.

The map was later redesigned into a more complete version organized around a set of guiding questions. Who are we empathizing with? What does this person need to do? What does this person see, say, do and hear? And what does this person think and feel, in terms of pains and desires? Gray has explained that he updated the canvas because much of the thinking behind the original had been lost in translation as versions circulated, and because his work on canvas design with Alex Osterwalder on the Culture Map taught him how to make such tools more usable, as he describes in his note on the update to the empathy map. The practical lesson is to start from the complete version, because the questions about who the person is and what they need to do anchor the rest of the map in a purpose.

How this understanding translates into revenue is explored in Maximizing sales through Customer Experience.

How do you build an empathy map step by step?

Building the map may seem like a matter of taking a template and filling it in. In reality, a sequence of steps is required to make the result rigorous, useful and representative of the user. If those steps are skipped, the map reflects internal opinions instead of customer insight and quickly loses value as a decision tool.

The first step is to define the scope and the goal. Before writing anything on the canvas, the team decides which experience, segment and context it wants to analyze, which business questions it needs to answer and which decisions the map will inform. A map of everyone who buys from the company will be vague. A map of small business owners who abandon the onboarding process in their first week will be sharp.

The second step is to conduct the relevant research. Interviews, surveys, analytics and observation provide the evidence, so that each note on the canvas is backed by data and not by assumptions. The third step is to fill in the map, and here there is no particular order. Teams can begin with what customers say, using verbatim quotes where possible, and move to what they do, think and feel. The fourth step is to analyze the data in each quadrant to find opportunities, paying special attention to tensions between what users say and what they do.

The fifth step is to identify user needs, for which Maslow's pyramid offers a useful frame. It helps the team distinguish whether a frustration relates to basic functionality, security and trust, belonging, recognition or fulfillment, and therefore how deeply the response must reach.

The Nielsen Norman Group adds three cautions that apply to every step. Maps built from memory record beliefs rather than findings, so each note should trace back to a research source. A sparse quadrant is a sign that more research is needed. And a map should be dated and revisited, because customers and contexts change. The way the value proposition responds to these insights is discussed in How to improve the customer experience with the value proposition.

What does an empathy map reveal in different industries?

The value of the technique becomes clear in situations where the stated reason and the real reason diverge. Three illustrative scenarios show how.

Imagine a retail bank concerned about low adoption of a mobile investment feature. Surveys say customers find it interesting, and usage remains low. An empathy map built from interviews and session recordings shows that customers say they want to invest, but think they may make a mistake they cannot undo, and feel anxious when a screen shows a risk warning in technical language. The finding points to reassurance and clarity rather than more features, which changes the roadmap and the communication.

Imagine a B2B manufacturer whose distributors complain about its ordering portal. The sales team assumes the issue is price. The map shows that distributors hear from their own customers that deliveries are uncertain, see conflicting stock information across screens, and feel exposed in front of the people they serve. The need is credibility with their own clients. A promised delivery date at the moment of order is worth more to them than a small discount.

Imagine a private health insurer wondering why customers renew without ever using its digital tools. The map reveals that members do the research on a competitor's comparison site, say nothing to the insurer about their doubts, and feel that contacting the company is a hassle. It indicates that the opportunity is proactive outreach at the moment of renewal. In each case the map did not replace research. It organized it into a form that executives could act on.

What are the benefits and limits of the empathy map?

The benefits are practical. The tool helps compile, categorize and make sense of the information collected about users. It adds depth to the buyer persona, capturing in a comprehensive way who these users are and what they perceive. It makes it easier to understand the why behind users' needs and wants, and it provides a holistic view of the user and their world, including problems and expectations, to identify opportunities. Perhaps most valuable, it helps discover gaps and eliminate biases and stereotypes that were taken as reality when they were only hypotheses.

The limits are equally important. Self-reports are imperfect, because what participants say they do may not match what is observed. Segments that are too broad produce contradictory notes that are hard to investigate. And a map that is produced once and filed away loses relevance. The discipline of linking each note to evidence, and of revisiting the canvas as research accumulates, is what separates a useful map from a workshop artifact.

What this means for the C-level

For the chief executive, the empathy map is a way to create a shared language about the customer across functions that rarely look at the same evidence. The recurring dispute at the start of this article, with price, service and product each blamed in turn, is typically resolved when the leadership team reviews a map built from real conversations and recordings. Decisions about priorities and investments in customer experience become easier to justify when they rest on that common picture.

For the chief marketing and commercial officers, the map is an input to attract and convert. Messages, offers and sales conversations that reflect how customers think and speak perform better than those built on internal vocabulary. For service and customer experience leaders, it identifies the moments where effort and emotion are highest, which are the points to retain customers by removing friction. For the chief financial officer, the benefit is the avoidance of expensive mistakes, because a feature or a campaign built on a false assumption is cheaper to correct on a canvas than after launch.

How to start next Monday

An experienced consultant would choose one segment and one situation that matter to revenue, for example the first thirty days of a new customer, and gather the evidence the company already has. Read ten recent support conversations, listen to five sales calls and look at the pages where onboarding stalls. Add to that three short interviews with customers who stayed and three with customers who left.

Then hold a ninety-minute session with people from product, sales, service and marketing. Fill the canvas together, noting beside every item where it came from, and mark the quadrants that are thin. End the session by agreeing on two or three hypotheses to test and one change that could be made within a month. Date the map and put it where the team will see it, because its value grows as it is revisited. If you want a structured template, the ICX toolkit described below provides one.

In the end, the empathy map helps companies understand their customers' needs and wants in a deeper, more human way. It goes beyond traditional segmentation and static profiles, revealing what people are trying to achieve, what they fear, what frustrates them and what they expect from a brand at each moment of the relationship. For leadership teams, incorporating it into strategic discussions creates a shared language about the customer, helps align priorities and justifies investments in customer experience.

How ICX Consulting helps

ICX Consulting is a commercial strategy and customer experience firm headquartered in Miami, serving companies in the United States and Latin America. We use empathy maps, buyer personas and customer journey maps as part of our voice of customer and experience design work, always tied to commercial results such as conversion, retention and cost to serve. Our customer experience consulting then translates the findings into redesigned journeys, service models and automation.

To put the technique to work, download the ICX Empathy Map Template for Customer Insight and use it in your next customer review. If you want to go from the map to the full path your customers follow, the Customer Journey Toolkit is the natural next step.

Frequently asked questions

What is an empathy map used for?

It is used to organize research about a user or segment into a shared picture of what they say, think, do and feel. Teams use it early in design to align on user needs, to find gaps in their research and to prioritize opportunities. It is a decision aid, not a substitute for research.

What are the parts of an empathy map?

The classic map places the user at the center and groups insights into what they say, think, do and feel, with the original version also adding what they see and hear. The updated canvas begins with who you are empathizing with and what that person needs to do, then adds their pains and desires.

What is the difference between an empathy map and a buyer persona?

An empathy map captures what a team knows about a user or segment in a specific situation, and is a working document that changes as research grows. A buyer persona is a more durable profile that summarizes a representative customer. Several aggregated maps can feed a persona, but one does not replace the other.

How do you make an empathy map reliable?

Base every note on evidence from interviews, surveys, analytics or observation, and record the source. Keep the scope narrow enough to avoid contradictions, mark thin areas as research gaps, and date the map so that it is revisited. A map built from memory records assumptions rather than findings.

Do you really know what is going wrong with your customer experience? If your teams explain customer behavior with different stories, a structured look at the evidence can align them quickly. Request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant through our contact page and we will help you turn customer insight into decisions that raise retention and revenue.

Do you really know what's going wrong with your customer experience?