Customer Empathy Maps is a Key Tool for Startups to Understand Customers' needs and behavior.

An Empathy Map is a collaborative tool designed to help you synthesize research and empathize with your users.

It helps you articulate what users say, do, think, and feel during their experience with your product or service.

This map can reveal unexpected insights that might not be immediately apparent.

It typically includes six quadrants:

• Says: What customers express about their experiences.
• Thinks: Their unspoken thoughts or concerns.
• Does: Actions they take to address their needs.
• Feels: Emotional states related to their experiences.
• Pains: Challenges or obstacles faced.
• Gains: Desired outcomes or benefits from your product.

Empathy maps enable startups to develop a deeper understanding of their target audience. They help you design better products by revealing both the emotional and practical needs of users, leading to solutions that truly resonate.

1. Identify your target audience.
2. Observe and research your users' actions, thoughts, and feelings.
3. Analyze insights and fill in the map based on user behavior and feedback.
4. Prioritize product features and ideas based on the empathy map insights.
5. Use tools like Miro or a paper template to fill in the map based on your insights.

• Pay attention to how users feel.
• Involve your co-founder and team for diverse insights.
• Make sure your map is based on real customer feedback.
• Update it regularly to adapt to changing customer needs.
• Use your completed empathy maps as reminders for future work.
• Ask thought-provoking questions to explore your audience’s experiences.
• Empathy map is a tool to help you focus on understanding people when designing.

• Gray, D. (2017). Empathy map canvas. Gamestorming. Empathy Map Canvas
• Musiyachenko, V. (2021). The empathy map: A human-centered tool. Empathy Map Story