What is an Empathy Map?

An Empathy Map is an innovation framework for business teams to develop a deeper understanding of customers collaboratively. It’s often employed as a part of the design thinking process to gain insight into your customers’ needs and better define user personas.

The exercise to imagine and visualize what they might think and feel, and to sense their position during their purchase journey can be strategically helpful to create a customer-centric approach, inspiring innovation and guiding the different stages of the development up to the communication of a product/service.

How to create an Empathy Map online using Vizzlo?

This vizzard offers a very intuitive template. The map is divided into six sections which will help you and your team to put yourselves in the customers’ shoes! How is their environment (what do they see)? What do their friends say (what do they hear)? What are their dreams (how do they think and feel)? Why would they purchase your product/service (their pains and gains)?

Creating an Empathy Map using it is as easy as using sticky notes! Check the examples to get inspired and follow these steps:

• If you need help to fill the sections, click the checkbox “Show guidance questions” and try to answer them using the sticky notes
• Click on any sticky note to directly edit its text
• Drag and drop the notes to reposition them within the sections
• Alternatively, you can enter your information using their corresponding cards in the sidebar
• Use the cards to assign an exclusive color to a specific note
• Explore the themes or even customize your own, to define the colors and fonts of your template
• Share or export your Empathy Map as PDF or PNG to embed it into your presentations and strategic documents

Tip: You can never know too much about your customers and your business! Try Vizzlo’s strategic visualizations to facilitate the management of innovation and trigger critical and creative thinking.

Empathy Map template: key features

• Custom color and fonts
• Optional guidance questions
• Custom document formats

Resources

Learn how to use the Vizzlo’s Empathy Map in your design thinking/innovation workshop. We’ve preared a blog post for you:

Managing innovation: beyond the sticky notes

Empathy Map: What's new?