Empathy Map

You have interview notes and a stakeholder asking for a persona. Between those two sits the step everyone skips: writing down what the user actually said, separately from what you decided it means.

What is on the board

• The centre card. The persona name, role, age and city, and under it the one situation this map covers. One map, one situation. Do not average two.
• 01 Says and 02 Thinks. Two quadrants. Says takes her words out loud, lifted from the interviews. Thinks takes what she does not say out loud. Four lines each in the example.
• 03 Does and 04 Feels. Does is observed actions in the order they happened, with the times attached. Feels is one emotion word and the trigger that caused it, never a feeling on its own.
• 05 Pains. A full width row. What blocks her, pulled from the four quadrants above it. One line each, so you can count them.
• 06 Gains. A full width row. What a good outcome looks like to her, written so it can be measured later.

Before and after

• Before: Notes and interpretation in the same paragraph.
  After: Says and Thinks in two separate cells.
• Before: “The user is frustrated.”
  After: One word, and the trigger that caused it.
• Before: Feelings guessed at a whiteboard.
  After: Lines lifted straight out of a transcript.
• Before: Pains that are really feature requests.
  After: Pains pulled from the four quadrants above them.
• Before: Gains nobody could ever measure.
  After: A gains row written to be measured.
• Before: Arabic pasted into an English board.
  After: Levantine text on a board built right to left.

What lands in the download

• FIG The template. One Figma file, four pages: English light, English dark, Arabic light, Arabic dark, all on one variable collection. Auto layout throughout, so every cell grows as you type.
• PDF The guide. 8 pages: the four boards, a five step how to use, and a glossary of every field with its Arabic label beside it.
• PDF, MD Pro. Five Claude prompts: fill it from my notes, critique it, Arabic edition, turn it into insights, push it to Figma.
• PDF Pro. The facilitation guide. A thirty minute session: what to ask, in what order, and how to close it.
• FIG Pro. A second worked example in a second market, as its own Figma file, so you can read the method instead of guessing at it.
• FOLDER Pro. The Claude Code skill. Point it at your notes folder and it fills the board, then writes it into your own Figma file by layer name.

Who it is for, and when to run it

For designers and founders who have raw interview notes and need a shared picture before a persona. Run it once per situation, straight after the interviews, with the transcript open beside you.

Two editions. Free: the Figma file and the PDF. Pro, 10 dollars: adds the five prompts, the facilitation guide, the second worked example and the Claude Code skill.