What Is an Empathy Map? Definition and Template
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization that captures what a specific user says, thinks, does, and feels about a problem. Created by Dave Gray at XPLANE, it turns scattered research into a single shared picture of the customer, so a whole team builds around the same person instead of their own private guesses.
Quick Answer: An empathy map is a four-quadrant grid — Says, Thinks, Does, Feels — that you fill in from real customer research. It gives your team one shared, evidence-based view of a user's experience, and it pairs naturally with personas and journey maps.
The Four Quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels
The classic empathy map splits a user's experience into four quadrants arranged around a picture of the person at the center. Each quadrant answers a different question, and together they force you to separate what a customer tells you from what they actually feel underneath.
Here is what belongs in each quadrant, with the question it answers.
| Quadrant | Question it answers | What goes here (qualitative) |
|---|---|---|
| Says | What does the user say out loud? | Direct quotes and phrases from interviews — the words they actually use |
| Thinks | What occupies their mind? | Beliefs, doubts, and preoccupations they may not say aloud |
| Does | What actions do they take? | Observed behaviors, workarounds, and current tools |
| Feels | What is their emotional state? | Frustrations, anxieties, hopes, and moments of relief |
Takeaway: The power of the map is in the gaps between quadrants. When what someone says contradicts what they do, or their calm words hide an anxious feeling, you have found exactly the insight a survey would have missed.
The extended empathy map — also from Gray — adds four more prompts: what the user Sees in their environment, what they Hear from other people, their Pains (obstacles and fears), and their Gains (wants and measures of success). Start with the four core quadrants and add the others only when you need the extra texture.
How to Fill an Empathy Map From Interviews
You fill an empathy map from real research, not from imagination. An empty grid guessed at over coffee is worse than no map at all, because it launders assumptions into something that looks like evidence. The raw material comes from customer conversations, support tickets, reviews, and watching people work.
Work through it in a few steps:
- Gather the evidence first. Pull transcripts, notes, and quotes from customer interviews. If you have not done this groundwork, start with a proper approach to customer research before you map anything.
- Pick one user and one situation. A map covers a single persona in a single context — "a solo founder trying to run payroll," not "small businesses" in general.
- Populate Says and Does from observation. These two quadrants are the factual layer. Use verbatim quotes and behaviors you actually witnessed.
- Infer Thinks and Feels carefully. These are interpretations, so tie each note back to a piece of evidence and flag anything that is a genuine assumption to test later.
- Do it as a team. The map is a collaborative artifact. Gathering everyone around one grid surfaces disagreements about who the customer really is — which is the whole point.
The empathy map is a staple of design thinking for founders, where it sits in the "empathize" stage as the tool that grounds every later decision in the user's reality. Strategyzer popularized a version of it alongside the Value Proposition Canvas for the same reason: you cannot design an offer until you understand the person receiving it.
Example: An Empathy Map for One Persona
A worked example makes the quadrants concrete. Picture a persona named Priya, a first-time founder validating a bookkeeping tool, built from a handful of real interviews.
- Says: "I just want to know if I'm going to run out of money." "I don't trust spreadsheets I built myself."
- Thinks: Worries she is missing something an accountant would catch; suspects she is overpaying for tools she barely uses.
- Does: Exports bank statements every Sunday night; keeps a messy backup spreadsheet "just in case"; asks a friend who is an accountant for reassurance.
- Feels: Anxious before tax deadlines, embarrassed about her ad-hoc system, relieved whenever a number finally reconciles.
Read across those quadrants and a product insight jumps out. Priya says she wants forecasting, but what she does and feels reveals a deeper need for reassurance and trust. A tool that leads with a confident, plain-language "you're on track" message may resonate more than one that leads with charts. That is the kind of direction an empathy map hands you.
Empathy Map vs. Persona: How They Differ
An empathy map and a persona are close cousins, and they work best together. A persona is the profile of who the customer is; an empathy map is a deep look at how one moment feels to that person. Neither replaces the other.
| Dimension | Empathy map | Buyer persona |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | A user's inner experience of a situation | A rounded profile of the target customer |
| Structure | Four quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, Feels | Demographics, goals, motivations, objections |
| Best for | Building shared empathy fast, in a workshop | A durable reference for product and marketing |
| Time horizon | A single context or moment | The customer across many contexts |
Takeaway: Build the empathy map first, in a room together, to develop raw understanding — then distill what you learned into a buyer persona that the rest of the company can reference for months. The map is the conversation; the persona is the record.
When an Empathy Map Sharpens Validation
An empathy map is most useful early, when you are still deciding what to build and for whom. Its job is to convert a pile of interview notes into a shared point of view, so the team stops arguing from private assumptions and starts arguing from the same evidence.
Reach for one when you are:
- Synthesizing interviews. After a round of customer conversations, mapping the findings turns transcripts into a picture everyone can see and challenge.
- Aligning a new team. A fresh hire or co-founder can absorb who the customer is in minutes by reading a well-built map.
- Pressure-testing a value proposition. If your pitch does not answer a pain or feeling on the map, that is a signal your offer is aimed at the wrong problem.
The empathy map also feeds directly into a customer journey map. Once you understand how a user thinks and feels in one moment, you can trace those emotions across the full sequence of steps they take — from first noticing a problem to living with your solution. Edmired's founder tooling is built around exactly this move: turning raw customer signal into decisions you can defend.
Key Takeaways
- An empathy map captures what a user says, thinks, does, and feels in a single four-quadrant grid centered on the person.
- It was created by Dave Gray at XPLANE and is a core design-thinking tool, also popularized in product circles by Strategyzer.
- The extended version adds Sees, Hears, Pains, and Gains — use it when the core four quadrants leave gaps.
- Fill the map from real research, never from imagination — Says and Does are observed facts; Thinks and Feels are careful inferences to verify.
- The insight lives in the contradictions between what people say and what they actually do or feel.
- Build it collaboratively so a whole team shares one evidence-based view of the customer.
- It complements, not replaces, personas and journey maps — map for empathy, persona for reference, journey map for sequence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the empathy map?
The empathy map was created by Dave Gray, founder of the consultancy XPLANE, as a tool for building shared understanding of customers. It became a staple of design thinking and was later adapted by others, including Strategyzer, who paired a version of it with the Value Proposition Canvas.
What are the four quadrants of an empathy map?
The four classic quadrants are Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels, arranged around a picture of the user. Says and Does capture observable words and actions; Thinks and Feels capture the internal beliefs and emotions you infer from research. An extended version adds Sees, Hears, Pains, and Gains.
Is an empathy map the same as a persona?
No. A persona is a rounded profile of who your customer is across many situations, while an empathy map is a focused look at how one user experiences a single moment. They work together: build the empathy map to develop understanding, then distill it into a persona your team can reference over time.
How do I create an empathy map?
Gather real evidence from customer interviews, reviews, and observation, then pick one persona in one specific situation. Fill Says and Does with verbatim quotes and observed behaviors, infer Thinks and Feels from that evidence, and do it as a group so the whole team aligns on the same customer.