Persona vs. Empathy map

In my today’s post, I would like to talk about an interesting and useful activity which I have done in the design thinking workshop. In my recent class’s activities, I’ve become familiar with Persona which is one of the practical tools utilized in order to create a better understanding of customer traits and feelings by creating a virtual avatar which shows the target user’s characteristics. Though arriving at an empathic design needs more than just making or drawing a virtual character which displays the target user, it also needs that the design thinker put themselves in the shoes of the people to consider more about what they feel, think, need, and love or hate about the services/product. Indeed, the Persona tends to personify the ideal customer and make a character that represents the demographic data and interests of the target user. So the Persona can have a great effect on the marketing strategy.

However, during my research regarding this tool, I realized the other similar tool named Persona Empathy Map which helps me to add empathy in creating user Persona. As sometimes I feel lack of emotional feeling and empathy in my ideas and solutions, thus a persona empathy map can help to bridge the gap between the virtual user’s persona and the real user’s experience.

In fact, empathy mapping aims to focus on the sensory and emotional information about the users and create a persona character which shows data and information including how the users see the product, what they may say about it, and how they feel about it. This map can be applied as a part of the empathic marketing study in order to evaluate the production phase. Moreover, it can play a critical role in the innovation procedure particularly when there is not much information available regarding the user experience.