What is this recipe?
An empathy map is a simple visual tool that helps your team understand a resident’s experience with a council service. It captures what a person is saying, thinking, doing, and feeling in a specific situation.
The main purpose is to move beyond your own assumptions and build a shared, evidence-based understanding of your users. It helps your team step into a resident’s shoes and see the service from their perspective. By mapping out their experience, you can identify their true needs, frustrations (pains), and goals (gains).
It’s not a guess; it’s a way to organise and make sense of observations from user research, like interviews or watching someone use your service. Using empathy maps ensures that you are solving real problems for real people, leading to services that are kinder, more effective, and easier to use.
When is it good to use?
This recipe is incredibly useful for putting residents at the heart of your work. It’s not just for big projects.
- At the start of a project to understand who you’re designing a service for, e.g., before redesigning the ‘report a missed bin’ form.
- After user research interviews to pull together all your notes and observations into a clear, single view.
- To analyse a difficult user journey, like understanding the challenges a vulnerable resident faces when applying for a Council Tax reduction.
- When your team is stuck in debates based on opinions, an empathy map can refocus the conversation on real user evidence.
- To quickly get a new team member or a stakeholder up to speed on who your users are and what they need.
How does it work?
Creating an empathy map is a collaborative team activity. You’ll need a whiteboard or a large sheet of paper, sticky notes, and your notes from user research.
- Draw the Map: Draw a large square and divide it into four equal quadrants. Label them Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. In the middle, draw a face and give your user a name and a bit of context (e.g., “Arthur, 80, applying for a Blue Badge for the first time”).
- Gather Your Evidence: This is key. Use direct observations from user research. If you haven’t spoken to users, your map will be based on assumptions, which is much less powerful.
- Fill the ‘SAYS’ Quadrant: On sticky notes, write down direct quotes you heard from the user during your research. What did they actually say? For example: “I don’t know which button to press.”
- Fill the ‘DOES’ Quadrant: What actions and behaviours did you observe? What physical steps did they take? For example: “Clicks the ‘Help’ button three times,” or “Abandons the online form and picks up the phone.”
- Fill the ‘THINKS’ Quadrant: This is what’s going on in the user’s head, which they might not say out loud. Based on what you observed, what might they be thinking? For example: “I feel stupid for not understanding this,” or “I hope I don’t lose all the information I’ve entered.”
- Fill the ‘FEELS’ Quadrant: What emotions is the user experiencing? Write down single words. For example: “Frustrated,” “Anxious,” “Confused,” “Relieved.”
- Summarise: As a team, look at the completed map and discuss the key insights. What are the user’s main pains (frustrations, obstacles)? What are their gains (what they really want to achieve)? This summary becomes your guide for making improvements.
An example
A district council team is trying to improve its online process for applying for housing benefit. They interview a single mother who has recently been made redundant. The team creates an empathy map based on the interview.
- SAYS: “It’s asking for documents from years ago, I don’t know where they are.” “Am I even eligible for this?” “I had to stop and start the form three times.”
- DOES: Tries to upload a photo of a document from her phone. Spends 10 minutes searching for her old landlord’s contact details. Asks her friend on WhatsApp for help.
- THINKS: “If I get this wrong, we won’t be able to pay the rent.” “They probably think I’m trying to cheat the system.” “Why is this so complicated?”
- FEELS: Overwhelmed, stressed, worried, inadequate.
The better outcome: The empathy map powerfully communicates the user’s emotional distress. The team realises the problem isn’t just the form’s layout; it’s the anxiety and lack of confidence the user feels. This insight leads them to redesign the service to include a clear checklist of required documents upfront, a ‘save and return later’ feature, and reassuring language throughout the process. This creates a more humane and effective service.
Further reading
- Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking: A great detailed overview from the Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/empathy-mapping/
- Understanding user needs: The official guidance from the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) on why this is so important. https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-research/understanding-user-needs
- Miro’s Empathy Map Template: A free digital whiteboard tool you can use to create empathy maps collaboratively with your team, wherever they are. https://miro.com/templates/empathy-map/
- Putting empathy at the heart of public services: An article from the Local Government Association on the importance of empathy. https://www.local.gov.uk/case-studies/putting-empathy-heart-public-services
- Gamestorming – Empathy Map: The original source for the empathy map exercise. https://gamestorming.com/empathy-map/