User Empathy Map
User Empathy Mapping is a great way to visualize what your users' need to help ground your team.
User Empathy Mapping is a great way to visualize what your users' need to help ground your team. Cultivating empathy, and putting ourselves in the shoes of our users is the best first step to impactful product design.
This exercise could also be flipped to instead better understand the needs of a team, or key stakeholder on a project that needs some TLC, etc.
People: 2 - 10+
Length: 20 - 30 minutes
Steps:
Ahead of your workshop, define what user group you will focus on
Select a visual that portrays them
1.1 Add details of what you know up-front so your team has the same mental model of who you're defining
2. Gather together cross-functional key people who have insight into this user group and work together across each quadrant to answer what they're saying, thinking, feeling, and doing.
3. Take a step back and analyze / synthesize what you see - are there gaps, patterns, trouble spots to address?
Tips:
Front-loading an empathy mapping session with known research can help bolster your workshop exercise. This also helps to ensure your user isn't defined with just adhoc knowledge.
This can be a great jump-start to defining your users, but don't stop with this exercise - seek to validate / invalidate what you've identified, and as you refine your understanding consider creating a user persona as a next step to really rally your teams around
Get started with this template right now.
Empathy Map Canvas
Works best for:
Research & Design, Market Research
Empathy Map Canvas is an essential tool for capturing user insights. By visualizing what users think, feel, and experience, you can create more effective and user-friendly designs. This template is perfect for teams focused on user-centered design.
Empathy Mapping
Works best for:
Research & Design, Market Research
The Empathy Mapping template helps teams capture detailed user insights. By understanding user perspectives, you can improve product features and customer satisfaction. This template is perfect for user research and product development.
IASA - Stakeholder Empathy Map
Works best for:
Market Research, Research & Design
Stakeholder Empathy Map Template is designed to understand the perspectives of stakeholders. It helps you capture their needs, concerns, and motivations, ensuring your projects align with stakeholder expectations and foster better collaboration.
Lean UX Canvas Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Product Management, User Experience
What are you building, why are building it, and who are you building it for? Those are the big pictures questions that guide great companies and teams toward success — and Lean UX helps you find the answers. Especially helpful during project research, design, and planning, this tool lets you quickly make product improvements and solve business problems, leading to a more customer-centric product. This template will let you create a Lean UX canvas structured around eight key elements: Business problem, Business outcome, Users and customers, User benefits, Solution ideas, Hypothesis, Assumptions, Experimentation.
Empathy Map
Works best for:
Research & Design, Market Research
The Empathy Map template helps you understand your users' needs, behaviors, and experiences. By visualizing what users think, feel, see, hear, and do, you can gain deep insights into their motivations and pain points. This template is essential for creating user-centered designs and improving customer experiences.
Storyboard for Animation
Works best for:
Storyboard
The Storyboard for Animation template offers a structured approach to visualizing your animation from start to finish. With sections for scenes, actions, audio, and technical details, this template supports every stage of animation production. Perfect for animators and creatives, it enhances collaboration, ensures consistency, and brings your animated vision to life with clarity and precision.