Empathy mapping is a team process; never solo.
principle — attributed to Ruud Janssen
Janssen's empathy-mapping discipline is operational. The team puts itself in one stakeholder's shoes at a time, looks through their eyes, thinks and feels like them, listens to what they hear. They articulate the pains and the gains, because those are the building blocks that reveal the emotions that will drive actions. Critically, empathy mapping is never attempted solo. It requires four or five people to empathize with one stakeholder. One person's empathy map is too narrow. Five people's collective map produces the multi-dimensional view of the stakeholder that the design needs. The technique generalizes for any product, service, or experience design context where stakeholder understanding has been delegated to a single team member.
For event designers, product designers, and service designers thinking about how to do stakeholder research well. The principle is most useful as a corrective when empathy mapping has been treated as a solo exercise.
empathy-mapping, team-process, stakeholder, pains-gains