IBM Design Thinking Immerse Yourself: Empathy Maps

Speaker:
Sean Pizel

Now we are going to talk about Empathy Maps.

Empathy maps are quickly created collaborative artifacts that increase our
understanding of users and help us discover opportunities to help them. It’s the
first principle of IBM Design Thinking that we must focus on our users. And the
second principle of IBM Design Thinking compels us to work in multidisciplinary
teams. Empathy Maps tie these principles together, taking advantage of our
multidisciplinary teams to improve our understanding of the user.

At any given moment, you may find yourself working with a group of people that
have, through research or personal experience, various perspectives of the user.
Whenever client teams, implementers, salespeople, or any of the many other roles
in an organization need to better understand a user, they can do this exercise
together.

Empathy Maps allow us to quickly combine everyone’s knowledge, and expand on

it, and form new insights. Often, these insights are reflected upon and added to a
Persona or instantly carried forward into another design activity, like an as-is
Scenario Map. In that sense, empathy maps are a great way to ground a team in
the user before beginning other activities.

Keep in mind that as with all IBM Design Thinking activities, co-location isn’t
absolutely necessary. Empathy maps can be done very effectively using a
collaborative technology.

Now let’s take a look at how our team construct an empathy map.