What is it?

Empathy Mapping is a visual collaboration tool that helps a group build a shared understanding of a specific person's experience. The group works around a large canvas divided into sections covering what the person sees, hears, says, does, thinks and feels, along with their pains and gains. Participants populate each section with sticky notes, then step back to look for patterns, contradictions and insights. The output is a one-page portrait of someone's world that aligns the team on who they are designing for, responding to, or trying to help. The real value is the conversation: people who thought they agreed on who the customer or colleague or stakeholder is often discover they have very different pictures in mind.

Also Known As

• Empathy Map
• Empathy Map Canvas

When to Use It

• Before designing a product, service or intervention, to ground the team in a specific user's reality
• When the team keeps arguing about what "the customer" wants, and you suspect they are each imagining a different person
• During persona development, to add emotional and behavioural depth beyond demographics
• Ahead of journey mapping or service blueprinting, to anchor the work in lived experience
• When planning a difficult conversation, pitch or piece of communication, to think through how the other party will receive it
• To refresh a stale persona with new research or new context
• When stakeholders need to understand a group they do not personally belong to (developers thinking about non-technical users, executives thinking about frontline staff, and so on)

When NOT to Use It

• When you have no qualitative data or direct experience of the person: the map becomes a group fantasy
• For market sizing, segmentation or anything needing quantitative rigour
• When the group is mapping itself (people tend to describe how they wish they were, not how they are)
• For generic "the customer" with no specific persona, role or situation defined
• When you need a decision in the next ten minutes: this technique earns its keep through discussion, not speed
• As a substitute for actually talking to the person you are mapping

The Empathy Map was developed by Dave Gray at XPLANE in the mid-2000s, building on earlier "big heads" sketches by the agency's creative director Scott Matthews. It was formally published in Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo's 2010 book Gamestorming and reached a wide audience through Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Generation the same year. Gray released a revised canvas in 2017 with a numbered sequence, explicit goal-setting and Pains and Gains sections inspired by Osterwalder's Value Proposition Canvas.

What You Need

Group size: 3 to 8 people per map is ideal. Below 3 and you lose the range of perspectives that makes the tool work. Above 8 and quieter voices get lost. For larger groups, run parallel maps on different personas or in small subgroups.

Time required:

• 45 minutes for a single map with a prepared group and good research
• 90 minutes is more realistic for a thorough session
• 2 to 3 hours if you are combining it with research review or mapping multiple personas

Space:

• A wall, whiteboard or large table big enough for a canvas at least A1 size
• Room for the group to stand around the canvas and move sticky notes
• Space to display supporting research materials (interview quotes, photos, data)

Materials:

• Printed or hand-drawn Empathy Map Canvas (A1 or larger)
• Sticky notes in at least three colours (one colour per section type, or one per contributor)
• Sharpies or thick pens (thin pens are unreadable from a step back)
• Masking tape
• Any research materials: interview transcripts, quotes, observations, support tickets, survey data
• A photo or description of the person being mapped, placed at the centre of the canvas

The Process

Setup

1. Choose the specific person to map. Not "the customer" but "a first-time visitor to the booking platform who is booking travel for elderly parents." The more specific, the better the map.
2. Gather any research, interview notes, quotes or observations you can put in front of the group.
3. Draw or print the canvas. The classic Gray layout has the person's head or a photo in the centre, surrounded by six sections: See, Hear, Say, Do, Think & Feel, with Pains and Gains below.
4. Invite a group that has some legitimate knowledge of the person (people who have met them, served them, researched them or sat next to them).
5. Label each section clearly and have a few starter prompts ready for each one.

Step 1: Frame the person and the goal

Time: 5 to 10 minutes

Purpose: Make sure everyone is mapping the same person in the same situation.

1. Stand the group in front of the canvas. Put the photo or description in the centre.
2. Read out a short persona statement: "Today we are mapping Priya. She is 42, a single parent, a regional sales manager with a team of six. She has been with the company for three years. We are focused on her experience of the new CRM rollout."
3. State the goal clearly: "What we want to understand is what Priya is going through during week one of the rollout so we can design better support."
4. Ask: "Before we start, does anyone have a completely different picture of this person in their head?"
5. Resolve any big differences before the group starts writing. If two people have very different mental models, you are about to produce a confused map.

Watch for:

• Someone who "doesn't really know" the person but has strong opinions. Either give them a specific contribution to make (reading quotes aloud, capturing sticky notes) or park their input for later.

Step 2: Populate the outer sections

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Purpose: Build up the observable picture of the person's world before diving into their inner experience.

1. Explain the four outer sections in order and what goes in each:
   • See: What is in their visual environment? Who surrounds them? What do they watch, scroll through, notice?
   • Hear: What are their friends, colleagues, boss saying? What media, podcasts, meetings are they exposed to?
   • Say: What do they say out loud, in public, in meetings? What phrases keep coming up?
   • Do: What actions do they take? What is their behaviour, their routine, their workaround?
2. Give everyone a pad of sticky notes and a pen.
3. Run each section for 5 to 7 minutes silently. Say: "Working on your own, write one observation per sticky note, using the person's perspective, not ours. Put as many as you have on the canvas."
4. Encourage short, specific notes: "I spend an hour a day clearing email" beats "gets lots of email."
5. At the end of each section, read a few notes aloud, cluster obvious duplicates, and let the group comment briefly before moving to the next section.
6. Work clockwise through See, Hear, Say, Do.

Watch for:

• People writing what they wish the person was doing rather than what they actually do.
• Notes that describe features of the product or situation, not the person's experience. Redirect: "What is Priya doing when that happens?"
• One person dominating while others defer. Say: "Let's hear from someone who hasn't posted yet."

Step 3: Fill in Think & Feel

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Purpose: Once the outer picture is clear, move into the inner experience.

1. Bring the group's attention to the central section. Say: "Based on what we have posted around the outside, what is likely going on inside this person's head?"
2. Use prompts to get beyond the obvious: "What keeps her up at night? What would make her look good at work? What is she proud of? What is she hiding?"
3. Run this section silently for 5 minutes, then open it up for discussion and adding more notes.
4. Push for specificity. "Stressed" is a start; "worried she will be the one the team blames when reports are late" is far more useful.

Watch for:

• The group projecting their own thoughts and feelings rather than the person's. Ask: "What makes you think she feels that?"
• Clichés and generic corporate language. If a note could fit any persona, it is probably not adding value.

Step 4: Identify Pains and Gains

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Purpose: Translate the emotional and behavioural picture into something the group can act on.

1. Explain: "Pains are what frustrates, worries or gets in the way. Gains are what would be a win, what would make this person's life better."
2. Ask each person to write their top three pains and top three gains on separate sticky notes.
3. Post them in the respective sections.
4. Cluster them with the group's help. Look for the same pain appearing in different words.
5. Ask: "Which one pain, if removed, would change this person's experience most?" Mark it with a dot or star.
6. Do the same for gains.

Watch for:

• Solutions disguised as gains ("has a better dashboard"). Push back: "What would the better dashboard actually let her do or feel?"
• Pains that are really the team's pains, not the person's. "Doesn't give us enough feedback" is your problem, not hers.

Step 5: Surface insights and tensions

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Purpose: Extract the "so what" from the map.

1. Step back from the canvas. Literally: ask people to take three steps back.
2. Ask in turn:
   • "What is surprising us?"
   • "Where are the contradictions between what she says and what she does?"
   • "What is she not saying that we can see in the map?"
   • "What is the biggest unmet need on this canvas?"
3. Capture the answers on a separate flip chart labelled Insights.
4. Aim for three to five insights that the group genuinely agrees on.
5. Read the final list aloud. Check: "If we only had these three insights to work from, would we know how to act?"

Closing

Time: 5 to 10 minutes

1. Ask the group: "Given what we have learned, what is the one thing we should stop doing, start doing, or do differently?"
2. Capture action points on a separate flip chart. Assign an owner to each.
3. Take high-resolution photographs of the canvas and the insights sheet before anyone leaves the room.
4. Agree how and when the map will be revisited. Empathy maps go stale; a calendar reminder at three months stops them becoming wallpaper.
5. Thank the group and close.

Facilitator Guidance

What Makes This Work

Empathy Mapping works because it slows the group down before they leap to solutions. Most teams argue about what to build, say or do before they have agreed who they are designing for. By forcing people to fill in the outer sections before the inner ones, the canvas grounds speculation in observation. By separating Pains from Gains, it prevents the lazy shortcut of assuming "remove the pain" is the same as "deliver the gain." And by making every contribution visible and moveable on a wall, it turns a private mental model into a public artefact the group can challenge and improve.

Common Pitfalls

• Mapping a fictional composite: The team maps "a typical user" who is actually a blend of five different people. Fix this by forcing a named, specific persona in a specific situation before any sticky notes go up.
• Ignoring the research: The group treats the canvas as a brainstorm of hunches. Keep the research visible throughout and challenge unsupported claims with "What tells you that?"
• Finishing the map and calling it done: The artefact is not the point. Always run Step 5 to extract insights, and always translate them into "so what" actions before closing.
• Premature problem-solving: Someone spots a pain and starts designing a fix. Park it on a separate flip chart called Ideas Parking Lot and redirect attention back to the map.
• Confusing the person with the role: "The CEO" is a role. "Marcus, CEO of a 30-person agency in year two of rapid growth" is a person. Be ruthless about this.
• Skipping the think and feel section: Groups often stay in the comfortable outer ring and never get to the emotional content. The map is toothless without it.

Adaptations

• Virtual/remote delivery: Use Miro, Mural or FigJam with a template. Timebox each section more tightly than in-person (4 minutes feels like 7 on a screen). Use reaction emojis or polling to cluster and vote.
• Larger groups: Split into subgroups of 4 to 6, with each subgroup mapping a different persona or the same persona from different angles (customer success team vs. sales team). Bring them back together for a cross-comparison.
• Shorter version (20 minutes): Use only four sections (Says, Thinks, Does, Feels). Skip Pains and Gains. Useful as a quick alignment exercise at the start of a meeting.
• With real user data: Pre-populate the canvas with verbatim quotes from interviews before the group arrives. Their job is to cluster and interpret, not invent.
• For internal stakeholders: Works well for mapping a colleague, a department or a leadership team you need to influence. Often more honest than when used for "the customer."
• Before a difficult conversation: Use it to map one specific person before a high-stakes meeting. The shift from "what I want to say" to "what they need to hear" is often the unlock.

Real-World Applications

Product redesign of a booking flow: A travel company's product team mapped three personas before redesigning their mobile booking flow. One map surfaced that older users were printing confirmation emails because they didn't trust the app would remember them. That single insight redirected the project away from a cosmetic redesign and towards a trust-focused overhaul of the post-purchase experience.

Onboarding first-time managers: An L&D team used Empathy Mapping to understand newly promoted managers in week one of their new role. The map surfaced that managers felt embarrassed to ask basic questions, which led to a redesign of the onboarding programme around anonymous peer forums rather than scheduled training sessions.

Preparing for a union negotiation: An HR director mapped the union rep she was about to negotiate with. The Pains section surfaced his genuine frustration at being blamed by his own members for slow progress, which reshaped her opening approach from justification to partnership and changed the tone of the talks.

Charity fundraising strategy: A small charity mapped their typical donor before reworking their appeal letter. The Hear section surfaced that donors were hearing wall-to-wall appeals from other charities, which led them to cut the frequency of their emails and focus on a single, specific ask with a personal story.

Cross-functional alignment in a SaaS company: The customer success, sales and product teams each built an empathy map for the same customer persona. Comparing the three maps revealed that sales thought the customer cared about scalability, product thought they cared about integrations, and customer success thought they cared about training. The difference triggered a joint research effort that reset the product roadmap.