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User Insights

Learning Goals

By the end of this section you will:

  • understand the importance of gaining user insight

  • understand what a empathy map is and how to create one

  • understand what a persona is and how to create one

It is important to establish users’ needs and wants because they establish the user-experience requirements and guide the design of digital solutions that are functional, relevant, and engaging. Understanding what users need helps ensure the solution effectively solves their problems, while understanding what they want helps create a more enjoyable and satisfying experience.

Without this insight, solutions risk being confusing, inefficient, or irrelevant, which can lead to user frustration, low adoption, and project failure. Identifying needs and wants early ensures the final product aligns with user expectations and delivers real value.

Empathy Maps

To help identify user needs and wants, UX professionals use empathy maps. Empathy maps are visual tools used to gain a deeper understanding of a user’s thoughts, feelings, needs, and behaviours. Empathy maps are important because they encourage a user-centred mindset, helping designers and developers avoid assumptions and focus on real user experiences.

By highlighting emotional and practical aspects of user interaction, empathy maps guide the creation of solutions that are more intuitive, relevant, and satisfying for the people who use them.

What is an Empathy Map Summary

What is Empathy Mapping? Empathy mapping is a collaborative visualization tool used by product teams to gain a deeper, shared understanding of their users. It helps articulate what is known about a specific user persona, focusing on what they are thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, saying, and doing. The goal is to make better, user-centred design decisions.

Why Use Empathy Mapping?

  • It helps guide design decisions when extensive research and testing for every scenario isn’t feasible.

  • It creates a shared understanding of user needs among team members and stakeholders.

  • It serves as a foundational step for creating detailed UX personas.

  • It helps prioritize user needs and identify areas that require further research.

How to Create an Empathy Map: The process begins with conducting moderated sessions or “empathy interviews,” which are one-on-one, open-ended conversations to uncover a user’s feelings and motivations.

The empathy map itself is structured into four quadrants, typically with a picture of the user persona in the centre:

  1. Says (Top-Left): What the stakeholder says out loud. Ideally, it contains verbatim and direct quotes from research.

  2. Thinks (Top-Right): Documents what the stakeholder is thinking throughout the research. This is inferred from their behaviour, expressions, and comments. This could include their underlying concerns or unspoken questions. Ask yourself: what occupies the stakeholder’s thoughts? What matters to the stakeholder?

  3. Does (Bottom-Left): Describes the explicit actions and behaviours observed during the session, such as clicking around a page or looking for something specific.

  4. Feels (Bottom-Right): Records the user’s emotional state, using adjectives to describe their feelings (e.g., frustrated, impatient, overwhelmed). This is also often inferred. Ask yourself: what worries the stakeholder? What does the stakeholder get excited about?

Practical Example: The video illustrates the process with a persona named Jill, who needs to order coffee. Jill prefers her local coffee shop but goes to Starbucks because of the convenience of their mobile app. The empathy map for Jill would include:

  • Says: She wants convenience, enjoys picking up coffee.

  • Thinks: She doesn’t have time for long lines, needs caffeine to function.

  • Does: Drinks coffee daily, is a heavy smartphone user, walks to work.

  • Feels: Impatient, overwhelmed, guilty about not supporting a local business.

Key Takeaways:

  • Empathy maps can be created for a single user or aggregated from a group of users to identify common themes.

  • They are not a replacement for personas but a tool to build them.

  • It’s a living document that should be updated as more research is conducted.

  • The process helps resolve internal conflicts and biases by grounding decisions in user insights rather than stakeholder opinions.

Empathy map are essential in understanding your users, their experiences and their expectations. You should aim to have an empathy map for each type of user your digital solution is intended to serve. This helps ensure that different perspectives are considered during the design process, especially when users have diverse needs or goals.

Creating an Empathy Map

To fill out an empathy map, consider:

Synthesise the user’s needs based on the empathy map. This will help define the design challenge. To synthesise an empathy map, group similar recorded observations together in order to find themes. Then identify needs directly from the user traits noted.

In doing this be aware that:

Teacher’s marking considerations

Checking the Empathy Maps

When marking the Empathy Maps teachers ask the following questions:

  • Are all the types of users represented?

  • Are there adequate observations in all four quadrants?

Empathy Map Activities

Empathy Map Activity 1: School Study Planner App

A school wants to develop a digital study planner app for students to manage homework, assignments, and revision. You are interviewing “Liam”, a Year 11 student who struggles with time management and often forgets due dates.

Liam’s Interview Summary:

“I always feel behind. I try to write homework in my notebook, but I lose it all the time. I’d like reminders but don’t want notifications every five minutes. I study best late at night. I use my phone a lot but hate clunky apps. I’m really stressed right now and don’t want anything too complicated.”

Instructions:

  • Fill in an empathy map for Liam.

  • Identify 3 needs (verbs).

  • Suggest one design challenge based on his needs.

Empathy Map Activity 2: Fitness Tracker for Older Adults

A startup is creating a fitness tracker designed for older adults (60+). You are interviewing “Janet,” a 67-year-old retired nurse who wants to stay active but finds technology overwhelming.

Janet’s Interview Summary:**

“I walk every day, but I don’t know how far or how fast. My daughter gave me a smartwatch, but I couldn’t work it out. I just want something simple. I don’t like lots of buttons or confusing screens. I do like seeing my progress, though—it makes me feel proud. I’m worried I’ll press the wrong thing and break it.”

Instructions:

  • Create an empathy map for Janet.

  • Identify 3 action-oriented user needs (verbs).

  • Frame one core user insight in the format:

    • Janet needs a way to… because…

Personas

Personas are fictional, detailed representations of typical users created based on research and data. They include information such as age, background, goals, challenges, and behaviours, helping teams understand who they are designing for. Personas are important because they keep the user’s needs and preferences at the centre of the design process.

By referring to personas, designers and developers can make more informed decisions, ensure features are relevant, and create user experiences that feel personal and effective. This leads to digital solutions that are more engaging, accessible, and successful.

Creating Personas for User Experience Research Summary

What are UX Personas? A UX persona is a fictional, yet realistic, profile that represents a primary user group for a product or service. It’s not just a demographic but a human-like snapshot based on real user research that synthesizes the attitudes, goals, and behaviours of a target audience. Personas are most effective when paired with an empathy map (which charts what a user says, thinks, does, and feels) to help designers and product teams deeply understand their users.

Why Do You Need Personas? Personas serve several critical functions in the product development process:

  • Guides Decision-Making: They help teams navigate design and feature decisions by focusing on the specific needs, motivations, and desires of the core user.

  • Builds Empathy: They encourage the entire team to step into the user’s shoes, fostering a user-centric mindset.

  • Resolves Disputes: A well-defined persona acts as a neutral reference point to settle internal disagreements about product direction, aligning the team around a shared understanding of the customer.

The video also distinguishes between UX personas, which are used to empathize with users and guide product design, and marketing personas, which are based on market research and used for customer segmentation and targeting.

How to Create and Use a UX Persona The creation process is rooted in research and synthesis. The video recommends the following steps and best practices:

  1. Do Your Research: Personas must be based on data. The video suggests conducting moderated interviews with at least 5 users for each persona you plan to create. If resources are limited, you can start with assumptions, competitor analysis, and internal interviews, but real user data is ideal.

  2. Look for Overlap: Analyse the research findings to identify common patterns in user behaviours, goals, personalities, and pain points.

  3. Limit the Number: To maintain focus and build genuine empathy, it’s best to create only one or two primary personas. Too many personas can dilute their effectiveness.

  4. Keep Them Relevant: Personas should be considered living documents and refreshed approximately every year to reflect changes in technology, user expectations, and behaviour.

Components of a Persona Profile The video demonstrates how to build a persona profile using a fictional freelance PR professional named “Jane.” A complete persona profile should include:

  • Name and Image: A realistic name and a photo of a real person (not a cartoon or celebrity) to humanize the persona.

  • Bio: A short narrative describing the persona’s background and lifestyle.

  • Quote: A concise statement that captures their core attitude or a key motivation.

  • Behaviours: A list of typical actions and habits relevant to the product.

  • Goals: What the persona wants to achieve.

  • Pain Points: The frustrations and challenges the persona faces.

  • Motivations: The underlying drivers for their behaviour (e.g., social connection, achievement, pride).

  • Personality: Traits, often visualized with scales (e.g., Extrovert vs. Introvert), which can be based on frameworks like Myers-Briggs.

  • Preferred Brands: A list of brands the persona uses, which provides context and acts as a mood board for their lifestyle and values.

Finally, the video advises to make the completed persona highly visible by posting it around the office to ensure the entire team consistently refers to it during their work.

Personas are fictional representations and generalisations of user clusters which identify:

You should aim to have a person for each type of user your digital solution is intended to serve, and ensure that the personas represent the diversity of your users. If you do not have access to target users, then the personas can be developed using assumptions, competitor analysis and internal stakeholder interviews.

Creating Personas

When interviewing for personas you need to consider:

Personas need to be specific, rather than general, so create a fictitious person.

Components of a persona:

Teacher’s marking considerations

When marking the Personas teachers ask the following questions:

  • Are all the types of users represented?

  • Have the provide proto-personas been used?

  • Do the personas cover include people with impairments?

Persona Activities

Persona Activity 1: School Canteen Ordering App

Your school is planning to replace long canteen lines with a mobile ordering app. You are designing a solution for students who buy food regularly but face delays or miss out due to sold-out items.

Create a persona for one typical user.

User Snapshot:

  • Name: Tyler

  • Year: 10

  • Lives 5 min walk from school

  • Buys lunch daily

  • Often skips lunch if lines are too long

  • Doesn’t like typing on small screens

  • Plays sport most afternoons

Instructions:

  • Create a name and select a real-person photo

  • Fill in:

    • Demographics: age, year level, location

    • Goals: what do they want from the app?

    • Behaviours: how do they currently interact with canteen services?

    • Pain Points: what frustrates them?

    • Accessibility: any impairments or preferences?

    • Devices used and proficiency

  • Add a quote to represent their attitude

Persona Activity 2: Library Booking Kiosk for Community Use

Your local council is upgrading its library system to include a touchscreen kiosk for booking study rooms, printing, and device loans. The solution must work for a range of users.

Create a persona for a user who isn’t tech-savvy.

User Snapshot:

  • Name: Amina

  • Age: 71

  • Retired teacher

  • Goes to the library 3–4 times a week

  • Doesn’t own a smartphone

  • Prefers printed instructions

  • Wears glasses, mild arthritis in fingers

Instructions:

  • Create a name and select a real-person photo

  • Fill in:

    • Demographics: age, location, education, tech use

    • Goals: why does she visit the library?

    • Behaviours: how does she currently complete bookings or ask for help?

    • Pain Points: what makes kiosk use difficult?

    • Accessibility: physical and visual needs

    • Devices used and proficiency

  • Add a quote that captures her experience using

Documentation
Mind Maps
Documentation
Use Case Diagrams