Empathy map
Definition
An empathy map is a visual tool used in design thinking and product discovery that captures what a specific user or customer thinks, feels, says, and does — helping teams develop a shared, concrete understanding of the person they're designing for before starting to build.
The empathy map was created by Scott Matthews at XPLANE (now Dachis Group) and popularized by Dave Gray. It's a foundational tool in design thinking, used at the beginning of a discovery process to build empathy for the user before jumping to solutions.
Classic empathy map quadrants:
- Says: Direct quotes from user research — what the person actually said in interviews or feedback. Use their exact words, not summaries.
- Thinks: What the user is thinking but may not say out loud. Beliefs, assumptions, and concerns they haven't verbalized.
- Does: Observable behaviors — what they actually do, not what they say they do. Actions, habits, routines.
- Feels: The emotional undercurrent. What are they worried about? What are they excited about? What frustrates them?
Some versions add:
- Pains: Obstacles and frustrations
- Gains: Goals and desired outcomes (bridging to the Value Proposition Canvas)
How to run an empathy mapping session:
- Agree on the user persona or segment you're mapping.
- Each person writes observations from research on sticky notes — one observation per note.
- Sort notes into the quadrants collectively.
- Discuss patterns, contradictions, and surprises.
- Capture the resulting map as the team's shared model of the user.
Empathy map vs. persona: Personas describe demographics and archetype. Empathy maps capture mindset and emotional context. The two complement each other — the persona tells you who you're designing for; the empathy map tells you what's going on in their head.
Empathy maps live well on a physical whiteboard. The sticky-note format makes it easy to move and cluster observations. BoardSnap AI reads the completed board and extracts the key themes across all four quadrants.
Examples
- UX team runs an empathy mapping session after 8 user interviews — the 'Feels' quadrant reveals unexpected anxiety about data privacy
- The 'Says' quadrant fills up with 'I just need it to be fast' — drives decision to prioritize performance over features
- Contradiction surfaces: users 'Say' they want more features, but 'Do' shows they only use two features regularly
- Empathy map for a project manager: 'Thinks' surfaces fear of looking disorganized to their team
- Workshop facilitator draws empathy map on whiteboard; team adds sticky notes for 20 minutes; BoardSnap captures the result
Snap a empathy map. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.