Several times in my career, I have heard many people / gurus say to use Empathy as a tool to better understand your customers and their needs, their behaviors’, their pains, and their future outlook. The idea is empathy would only provide the experience from the past and not give any new insights in the needs and requirements of the future.
A lot of us (including me) get confused, when we speak about Persona and Empathy … are they similar concepts, do they capture and provide similar information, how are they to be used, when are they to be used, what is the value proposition of using them, which one is a better approach?
This document of mine would try and shed some light on the Empathy part and hopefully in future we shall explore the depth of Persona also.
Empathy map is a tool for target audience analysis. It is used to identify feelings, thoughts and attitudes of existing or potential users / customers and understand their needs, The idea is to obtain in-depth insights on potential users by means of what, why and how questions. Empathy maps focus more on the emotional state of customers.
Let’s first focus on the usage and value that Empathy would provide:
- It would help us better understand and appreciate insights from testing or observations with the users and capture different perspectives
- Helps understand where the user has problems or potential benefits
- Helps to collect findings to build Persona
Empathy map as a tool should be used in conjunction with other tools like Customer Journey mapping, Persona / User Profiling and Value proposition canvas
When doing Empathy mapping with the customer, ensure that we have 2 people, one person documents and records the information while the other would-be posing questions. Typically, this should max 30-45 mins of session
Use a template for Empathy map where you record everything about the customer such as:
- Think & feel
- Hear
- See
- Say & Do
- Pains
- Gains
Use questions such as:
- Where is the customer? What do they see?
- Who influences them, with whom do they interact / communicate?
- What emotions are driving the customer
- What does it say about their attitude?
- Where does the customer behave in a contractionary manner?
- What are their biggest challenges / pain areas?
- What are the opportunities and benefits they may have?
While doing this exercise, focus on human values – like thoughts, opinions, feelings, emotions (at times these may not be directly available, you have may to infer based on their body language, tone, word selection).
Pay special attention to contradictions, often we can identify something new from what the customer says and the way they behave.
Using this data, analysis all the edge cases, dig into unique behaviors and identify what are we building … why are we building, will it serve the purpose?
Empathy mapping is a unique tool that a Product Owner or a Business Analyst should have in their armory to better serve and engage the End User community, better your tools, product and services are aligned to the end user … higher is the potential for your products to dominate the market.
Again it should never be one size that fits all.
agilescrumworld 