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What Is an Empathy Map and How to Create One

Oct 6, 2026

3 min read

Understanding users means looking beyond what they do and exploring what they think, feel, say, and need. An empathy map brings these insights together in a simple visual format, helping teams turn user research into a clearer, shared understanding of the people they are designing for.

What is an empathy map

An empathy map is a visual tool for organizing what you know about a user. It helps teams better understand users’ needs, behaviors, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, and use that understanding to support design decisions.

Empathy maps are often created collaboratively, which also makes them useful for bringing research findings together and building a shared understanding of the user across a team.

What does an empathy map include

The traditional empathy map places the user or persona in the center and divides the information into four areas:

Says: includes what users express directly, such as quotes or statements collected during interviews or other research.
Thinks: focuses on what may be going through the user’s mind, including their motivations, goals, needs, concerns, expectations, or desires.
Does: captures observable actions and behaviors, such as the steps users take or how they interact with a product.
Feels: represents the user’s emotional state and can include both the emotion itself and the situation that caused it.

Why use an empathy map

Empathy mapping can help organize and synthesize qualitative research from interviews, field studies, diary studies, surveys, research notes, and other observations.

Bringing this information into one place can make it easier to identify user needs, pain points, behaviors, motivations, and possible opportunities.

It can also reveal what you do not know. If parts of the map are sparse or difficult to complete, this may show that more research is needed.

Empathy maps can represent one individual user or combine patterns from multiple users. An aggregated map can also support the creation of personas, although it does not replace them.

How to create an empathy map

Start by defining which user or user group you are mapping and what you want to understand from the exercise.

Next, gather the relevant research and translate it into observations or notes. Place each observation in the part of the map where it fits best.

If the map is being created as a team, group similar observations together and look for recurring themes, contradictions, outliers, and gaps.

Once the map is complete, review it as a whole. Discuss the patterns you see, the needs or pain points that stand out, and how those findings may affect the design.

The structure does not have to stay fixed. Categories can be adapted, added, or removed depending on the purpose of the research and the user being studied.

Keep the map updated

An empathy map should reflect what you currently know about the user, so it can be updated as new research and insights become available.

The main value of the exercise is keeping the team focused on observed user experiences. By bringing research into a shared format, empathy mapping can help reduce reliance on unsupported assumptions and keep user needs visible during design discussions.

Final words

Empathy maps are simple, but their value comes from the quality of the research behind them. When they are based on real observations and updated as new insights emerge, they can help teams maintain a shared understanding of users throughout the design process.

Rather than treating an empathy map as a one-time exercise, use it as a living reference. Revisit it when new research becomes available, challenge assumptions that are not supported by evidence, and use the patterns and gaps you uncover to guide further research and design decisions.