Follow This Guide for Inducing Empathy Mapping in UX Design

by Pete Campbell, Guest Contributor

The sole objective of UX design is to get inside the user’s head. For this you will need to think, act and believe like the user and consider what would you do, worry about and think if you were the user.

Easier said than done, these are mere comments that are hard to follow and emphasize. As a UX designer and a professional, you are simply a designer and not the user and therefore it is difficult to know what they think and would do.

---

---

No matter how much training you receive or expertise you have, it is not easy to get into the heads of the users. 
The best you can do is:

• Ask
• Research
• Observe and 
• Surmise

This will help you to understand them in a much better way which will, in turn, help you to empathize and its mapping.

It is a critical part 
Empathy mapping and utilization is the most critical as well as the comprehensive part that will ensure you come up with a more human-centered User Experience Design. You will come across several articles and conversations across different websites and forums but seldom will all of these focus on how you can achieve it. 
As you research, you will find the first hand that the users:

• Struggle while working with a design system
• Feel the frustration in using the system
• Hear their words that spell their needs but they cannot find it in the system

All these lead to the need to empathize but behind every UX design, there is a team that includes the client, the company CEO and others who make it a difficult job. Why? This is because they do not understand the wants and needs of the users. Therefore, it becomes the added responsibility of the UX designer to help them do so. How? Simple! Through empathy mapping!

This will help you as aUX professional to overcome the challenges that you may often face in specific situations wherein:

• The colleagues and stakeholders falter in their own opinions and feelings
• They typically forget the need to understand their target audience and at the same time 
• They are unwilling to make any changes to the culture of the company

With empathy mapping session you will be able to meet all these challenges confidently and overcome these successfully. You will be able to do a lot of things that need to be done essentially to design a product that will provide the optimal user experience. These specific jobs are:

• Conducting a better user value research
• Focusing on the participants as well as the users and 
• Put yourself as well as the others in the shoes of the users while they interact with the product or service

The most important point here is that there will be no need to alter the culture of the company for that matter. 

The importance of empathy mapping
In order to be successful in your UX design, you will first need to know what empathy mapping is all about and what is the need to create such a map. 

• In simple words, an empathy map is simple and easy to understand visual
• It actually captures the knowledge and info regarding the behaviors and attitudes of the users

It is a useful tool that will help you to deliver the users exactly what they want. Typically empathy mapping is a humble workshop activity that you can perform with several people such as:

• The CEO
• The stakeholders
• The product development team
• The marketing and sales team and 
• The creative teams

When you do so, you will be able to create a more dynamic and effective solution, understanding the real problem that the users are experiencing. This exercise will help you as well as the participants to consider all aspects from the point of view of the users. This, in short, will help you as well as the targeted audience to reach the respective goals by overcoming the different challenges that are associated with UX design.

Stages to include
Ideally, empathy maps are mostly required at the beginning of the UX design process and after the user research. It will help you in proper planning and assessment of the different requirements. The mapping process will also help you to:

• Synthesize and analyze research observations
• Reveal deeper insights regarding the needs of the users
• Guide you through the construction of personas
• Serve as a bridge between the concept deliverables and the personas

Since the map will be created based on the research data, it will be more accurate, effective and help you to make the best use of the knowledge from the internal participants as well as the existing personas.

The benefits of it
When you include empathy mapping in the early stages of the project you will be able to work according to the point of view of the users to create solutions just as they want. There are lots of benefits of empathy mapping that will cover almost every aspect of the UX design process whether it is regarding the ideas required for the content, the web page design, new service offerings or app prototype. The benefits of empathy mapping include:

• Having a better understanding of the needs of the user
• Providing assurance of a better design
• Facilitating distilled information collection 
• Ensure that the work is based on a single visual reference
• Gaining callouts of main insights from research
• It is fast 
• It is inexpensive
• It is easily customizable 
• Providing knowledge about the common information and goals and 
• Having a common understanding among teams

You will simply have to follow a few basic and additional steps to create an empathy map to enjoy all these benefits. 

To create an empathy map, you will have to first establish and focus on your goals, who is the person intended, what is the desired outcome and the world and audience you want to capture. Explore more on what they see, hear, do, think, feel and say to get into their minds easily and deliver them exactly what they want.

Author bio: 
​
Pete Campbell is a social media manager and has immense knowledge about email marketing and Instagram promotion. He loves to travel, write and play baseball.

---