ANALYSIS TOOL BOX

Empathy Map

Capture what you know about a subject's statements, unspoken beliefs, observed behavior, and emotional state — grounded in sourced evidence, with inferences flagged separately — to build a shared, human-centered picture before you move on to define the problem.

How this technique works

About this technique

What is an Empathy Map?

An Empathy Map organizes what you know about one person into four quadrants: what they say, what they think, what they do, and what they feel. Dave Gray and his team at the consultancy XPLANE developed it in the early 2000s, and it reached a wide audience through the 2010 book Gamestorming. It now anchors the "Empathize" stage of design thinking. It is not one of the structured analytic techniques from intelligence tradecraft, so cite it as a design-thinking method.

When to use it

Use an Empathy Map early, before you define the problem or write hypotheses, when one person's perspective will shape your analysis. In intelligence work, that person is usually a foreign decision-maker, an adversary planner, or the policymaker who will read your product. Mapping that one person keeps you from jumping straight to assumptions about how "the regime" or "the customer" will react.

How to use this tool

  1. Name the map and its subject. Be specific: "Minister X — sanctions response," not "the government."
  2. Fill Says and Does from sources. Add direct quotes and observed actions, each with a source citation. These default to sourced fact.
  3. Fill Thinks and Feels with inferences you can defend. These default to inference, so your reasoning stays visibly separate from your evidence.
  4. Add Pains and Gains if the subject's incentives matter to your question.
  5. Flag key inferences for Key Assumptions Check. In that tool, Seed candidates pulls them in for testing.
  6. Save a version before new reporting arrives, then compare your earlier read with what the subject actually did.

Common pitfalls

  • Treating inference as quotation. If an entry in Says turns out to be a paraphrase, edit it. The tool asks you to re-check its citation.
  • Mapping a group instead of a person. The quadrants blur when the subject is an institution.
  • Mirror-imaging. Filling in Thinks and Feels with what you would feel in the subject's place.

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