Empathy Maps · A Faster Way to Synthesize Customer Research
The four-quadrant tool from XPLANE that helps teams synthesize customer research into a shareable artifact. The quadrants, the workflow, and where it fits alongside personas and journey maps.
Attribution. The Empathy Map was developed by Dave Gray at XPLANE in the mid-2000s and popularized through his book Gamestorming (with Sunni Brown and James Macanufo, 2010). It has since become standard in design thinking practice. This article reviews the tool and adds practical guidance.
The four quadrants
The classic empathy map is a single page split into four quadrants, with the customer at the center. Each quadrant captures a different dimension of the customer's experience.
Says. What the customer says out loud — direct quotes from interviews, support tickets, reviews, social mentions. Real language, not summaries.
Thinks. What the customer is thinking but not necessarily saying. Inferred from behavior, body language during interviews, between-the-lines reading.
Does. Observed behavior. What the customer actually does in the situation — separate from what they say they do (often different).
Feels. The customer's emotional state. Frustration, anxiety, hope, relief, confidence. Often inferred from tone, word choice, and context.
Updated versions of the empathy map add two more sections: Pains (frustrations, obstacles, fears) and Gains (desires, hopes, what success looks like). These overlap with the Value Proposition Canvas.
How to build one
Pick a specific customer or persona. Empathy maps work best when narrowly focused — one customer in one situation, not "all customers" in general.
Gather research inputs: interview transcripts, support tickets, survey responses, sales call recordings, review excerpts.
Workshop with the team. Each person silently adds sticky notes (or virtual cards) to each quadrant based on the research.
Cluster and synthesize. Group related notes. Surface tensions (what they say vs what they do is often the most revealing).
Identify implications. What does this empathy map tell us we should change about the product, marketing, or experience?
Where empathy maps fit
Empathy maps are most useful as a synthesis layer between raw customer research and operational outputs. They are not a substitute for the research itself — they're a way to make research insights visible and shareable across the team.
The full hierarchy of customer research artifacts:
Artifact
Purpose
Interview transcripts
Raw source material
Empathy maps
Quick synthesis, team alignment
Buyer personas
Detailed archetype documentation
Customer journey maps
End-to-end experience visualization
Value proposition canvas
Product-customer fit mapping
Jobs-to-be-Done statements
Decision-driver framing
Empathy maps are starter artifacts. They're fast to produce and good for getting the team on the same page. For deeper, longer-lasting customer documentation, build personas and journey maps. For decision-driver clarity, build JTBD statements. The empathy map's value is speed and accessibility, not depth.
Common mistakes
Building empathy maps from internal opinion. Like personas and journey maps, empathy maps are only as good as the research behind them. Filling one in based on "what we think the customer feels" produces fiction.
Filing the artifact and never using it. An empathy map that sits in a Notion doc and never influences product, marketing, or support decisions is wasted effort. Use it to drive actual decisions.
Trying to map the average customer. The empathy map works best for one specific persona in one specific moment. Trying to capture "all customers always" produces vague, generic content.
Related on RGM
Buyer personas — the deeper artifact that empathy maps feed.