during the customer journey<\/a>, depending on what quadrant they are in. However, the tool is distinct from the user journey in design and purpose.<\/p>\nUser journeys describe what “next steps” users undergo, while empathy maps tell you what users experience during each step.<\/p>\n
How to Build an Empathy Map<\/h2>\n Once you’re ready to start building an empathy map, you can use the following steps as a template.<\/p>\n
Define Your Goals<\/h3>\n The first step in building an empathy map is to define your goals. There are three big questions you want to answer.<\/p>\n
1. Whom does the empathy map represent?<\/strong> \nYou need to determine whom you want to understand and empathize with. Is it a new customer? An existing one? Or somebody who left and you’re trying to win back?<\/p>\nDevise a realistic story for the person based on your brand’s project and its objectives. If your goals require targeting multiple personas, then each caricature needs a unique map.<\/p>\n
2. Why are you making empathy maps?<\/strong> \nKnowing why you’re investing resources into empathy maps, rather than personas or a different type of user representation, helps keep your team focused.<\/p>\nAre you trying to help your team better understand a new or existing user? Are you trying to gather and distill a bunch of user research into a digestible format?<\/p>\n
3. What do you hope the user does?<\/strong> \nYou need a clear, measurable concept of what success looks like for your project and how user interaction affects that success.<\/p>\nKnowing what you hope users will do establishes project context and helps focus your user research activities.<\/p>\n
Perform or Collect User Research<\/h3>\n If you haven’t completed (or started) your user research, now is the time to do so. If your research is all wrapped up, then you should gather, sort, and review your findings.<\/p>\n
Remember, building an empathy map requires qualitative research, so you’ll need at least one of the following data inputs:<\/p>\n
\nUser interviews<\/li>\n Social media analyses<\/li>\n Field studies<\/li>\n Sales team analyses<\/li>\n Qualitative surveys<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFill Out the Quadrants<\/h3>\n Empathy mapping is best performed as a team. Gather all of the vital team members on the project: project managers, UX designers, content strategists, and developers. If possible, bring on a stakeholder, too. They can help balance the business side of the equation and share insights about how the user’s mapping traits may align with or change project priorities.<\/p>\n <\/noscript>Example of a completed empathy map.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOnce everybody is present and ready, each team member should consider the questions raised in each empathy map quadrant. Having these questions somewhere visible is always helpful.<\/p>\n
Next, match insights from your user research to those questions and write a brief idea or insight in the relevant quadrant. A dry-erase board and sticky notes (or the digital equivalent) work great for this exercise.<\/p>\n
For example,e if you notice that your users always share videos of cute animals, that can become a note in the “does” quadrant with the note label, “shares animal videos.”<\/p>\n
We recommend setting aside at least one hour per empathy map you’re building. Aim for at least 50 ideas stickied to the map.<\/p>\n
After the ideas are established and assigned, go through each quadrant as a team and then refine the ideas into a clean, agreed-upon empathy map. Pay special attention to patterns that appear during your refinement. We recommend having no more than 15 notes or insights present in the final map.<\/p>\n
Empathy Mapping Takeaway Tips<\/h2>\n Hopefully, you feel prepared to build an empathy map with your team. Remember, empathy maps are design documentation that can guide your team in times of uncertainty and keep user-centric design at the forefront.<\/p>\n
Although an empathy map isn’t a universal solution to every user behavior question you may encounter, it’s an excellent tool to predict user behavior, remove bias from your designs and products, and uncover missed research or overlooked information.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among the biggest mistakes content strategists and UX designers make is thinking they are an accurate representation of the brand’s users. We all know this self-insertion is a faux pas, yet we occasionally break the rules. The results of such roleplay are simultaneously predictable and untamed. For small decisions, your opinion may resolve without negative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":58624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[680],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
How and Why Marketers Should Use Empathy Maps - Portent<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How and Why Marketers Should Use Empathy Maps - Portent","description":"Empathy maps are powerful tools for human-focused design and content strategy. Learn what empathy maps are, why they\u2019re important and how to use them.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net\/blog\/content\/how-and-why-marketers-should-use-empathy-maps.htm","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How and Why Marketers Should Use Empathy Maps - Portent","og_description":"Empathy maps are powerful tools for human-focused design and content strategy. 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