Empathy Map Templates: How to Choose One and Use It

Start with the simplest format that answers your research question. A four-part Says, Thinks, Does, Feels map suits a focused user-perspective workshop. Choose an expanded canvas when you also need context such as what users see or hear, or their pains and gains.

Then choose the working format. A printable PDF or presentation canvas suits a facilitated session. A collaborative Whiteboard suits shared visual work. A structured List suits tracking individual insights, sources, review status, and follow-up. A template organizes evidence and interpretation; it does not establish that an interpretation is true.

What an empathy map records, and what it does not

An empathy map organizes evidence and interpretations about a user’s experience, behavior, needs, and emotions. The classic format has four sections: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. Expanded canvases may add See, Hear, Pains, Gains, or a goal. There is no single universal layout.

Keep the claim type visible. A direct quote belongs in Says. An action observed in a session can support Does. Thoughts and feelings are interpretations unless the person stated them directly. Label each entry as a quote, observed behavior, interpretation, or hypothesis, and retain its supporting source.

An empathy map focuses on a user’s perspective in a defined situation. A persona is a synthesized representation of an audience or user type. A journey map traces an experience across stages or touchpoints. These artifacts can inform one another, but they answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable canvases.

How to choose among current empathy map templates

Compare formats by how people will work during the session and what must remain usable afterward. The options below include empathy maps and adjacent customer-research templates, so they are not all interchangeable or downloadable files.

Option	Best fit	What is documented	Important limit
ClickUp Empathy Map Whiteboard	Collaborative visual workshop	A Whiteboard for mapping what customers think, feel, see, and do, including pains and gains.	Users can convert selected objects into tasks, but the template page does not promise automatic task creation.
ClickUp Empathy Map List	Structured insight tracking	A distinct List template with Discussion points, Source, Validity Rating, and Empathy Quadrant fields, plus three views and two statuses.	It is not the Whiteboard template. The team must define what Validity Rating means.
Business Model Analyst PDF	Printed, facilitated session	Letter and A3 printable PDF with Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels.	Designed for printing and annotation, not direct typed editing.
Moqups Empathy Map Canvas	Shared visual canvas	A current page describes a free, customizable, and shareable visual canvas.	The page does not document automatic task assignment or action-plan generation.
SlideChef template	Presentation-led discussion	A current page describes a customizable PowerPoint and Google Slides template.	Confirm current access conditions and exact layout before standardizing on it.

Use the Whiteboard when participants need to arrange ideas visually, the List when each insight needs structured tracking, and a printable or slide canvas when the session is offline or presentation-led. Check current vendor permissions and plan conditions before relying on editing, field visibility, or conversion features.

Some related ClickUp templates solve different problems. The Customer Journey Map is for experiences across stages. User Story Mapping supports agile story organization. The Voice of the Customer template organizes customer needs, sources, and solutions. The Customer Success Plan supports customer-success planning. Select these only when that is the work you need to perform.

A repeatable workflow: source evidence before interpretation

Make the map reviewable by recording context and evidence before writing a synthesized insight. One map should describe a defined segment, situation, and research period. Keep the map, insight, evidence, and action as separate records: one map can contain many insights, an insight can have several supporting evidence records, and one evidence record can support more than one insight.

A practical research-operating model can use these proposed fields:

• Map: map_id, segment_id, situation_id, research_period, map_version.
• Insight: insight_id, claim_type, quadrant, researcher_note, reviewer_status.
• Evidence: evidence_id, source_system, source_record_id, source_url, source_timestamp, excerpt_hash, evidence_excerpt.
• Action: action_id, reviewed_insight_id, action_type, destination, owner, status.

These are proposed fields, not a published ClickUp schema. ClickUp’s List template documents a Source field, but a Custom Field should not be treated as a database-enforced unique key or an immutable provenance record.

Suppose a participant says setup was easy, while a session record shows abandonment during configuration. Preserve both records. Do not label the person confused as a fact. Ask what happened between the stated ease and the observed abandonment, then let a reviewer decide whether the discrepancy warrants further research.

Implementation patterns for common template choices

The template determines where people record findings. The operating process determines what happens next. Use the following patterns to connect the two without claiming an unsupported integration.

Visual Whiteboard to reviewed ClickUp task

• Trigger: A researcher has reviewed a Whiteboard item and decided that follow-up work is warranted.
• Documented sequence: Add a Sticky Note, Shape, or Text box to a ClickUp Whiteboard, convert the selected object into a task, save it in a ClickUp List, and add an assignee or available Custom Fields.
• Validation: Confirm the source reference, approved claim type, destination List, and task owner. If the evidence is contradictory, route it to research rather than implementation.
• Fallback: Retain the insight and evidence as research records when the user lacks the required plan or role access, or when the finding is not yet actionable.

Structured List for insight tracking

• Trigger: A team needs to track insights, sources, quadrants, and review status beyond one workshop.
• Documented fields: The current ClickUp Empathy Map List page names Discussion points, Source, Validity Rating, and Empathy Quadrant, and lists three views and two statuses.
• Validation: Define allowed values for Validity Rating before use. Decide whether each task represents a map, an insight, a source excerpt, or an action, rather than mixing those grains in one field.
• Fallback: Keep source excerpts in a separate research record when the List is being used only as a summary or action queue.

Printable or presentation canvas

• Trigger: A facilitator needs an offline artifact or a presentation-led discussion.
• Documented fit: The Business Model Analyst page describes a printable Letter and A3 PDF using Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. SlideChef describes a customizable PowerPoint and Google Slides template. Moqups describes a customizable, shareable visual canvas.
• Validation: Capture the source reference and review decision outside the visual artifact because PDF and presentation formats do not inherently provide structured validation, deduplication, approval history, or task synchronization.
• Fallback: Rebuild the grid in a slide deck when typed editing is needed for the Business Model Analyst PDF, or transfer approved findings into a structured List after the workshop.

What ClickUp documents about Whiteboard follow-up

ClickUp documents a user-directed way to turn selected Whiteboard content into follow-up work. A user can convert a Sticky Note, Shape, or Text box into a task saved in a ClickUp List, then select an assignee and, where available, Custom Fields. A person still decides whether the finding warrants a task and where it belongs.

ClickUp also documents collaborative editing and comments. Its Help Center warns that simultaneous saves can result in the latest save taking priority, so collaborative editing should not be treated as conflict-free version control. Whiteboards can be exported in visual and data formats, but tasks and Docs added to a Whiteboard are excluded from the export. Keep structured evidence and task records separately when traceability matters.

If your team is configuring this process in ClickUp, ClickUp setup and automation support is optional help with workflow configuration, not a prebuilt empathy-map integration.

Use AI as a bounded assistant, not the judge

AI-assisted annotation can be a proposed research practice, but it is not a verified feature of the cited templates or a turnkey integration. A researcher can provide approved excerpts and ask an assistant to suggest a quadrant, extract candidate verbatim language, draft a concise insight, or flag a possible contradiction. The researcher accepts, edits, or rejects each suggestion before it becomes a finding.

Keep each annotation run separate from the underlying evidence record. The following is illustrative and shows distinct row grains: evidence_id identifies a versioned source excerpt, while annotation_id identifies one AI suggestion from one run.

{
  "evidence_id": "ev_018_v1",
  "source_system": "research_repository",
  "source_record_id": "session_018",
  "excerpt_hash": "sha256:illustrative",
  "annotation_id": "ann_018_run03",
  "claim_type": "quote",
  "quadrant": "says",
  "draft_insight": "Preserve the participant's wording before synthesis.",
  "needs_researcher_review": true
}

Use deterministic checks for required fields, allowed claim types and quadrants, source references, duplicate evidence, excerpt length, and unnecessary personal data. Reject an invalid or source-less suggestion before review. Use human judgment to interpret meaning, assess contradictions, and set action priority. Never use an AI classification alone to make customer-status, churn-risk, eligibility, pricing, or access decisions.

Turn selected insights into accountable next steps

An insight is ready to become an action only when a source is attached, the segment and situation are clear, the claim type is labeled, a reviewer has accepted the interpretation, and an owner and destination are named. Check for an equivalent open action, but do not rely on a search-then-create check when concurrent writers are possible.

For a separate database or multi-writer workflow, use stable identifiers and enforce uniqueness at the database layer or through a transactional upsert. These proposed keys identify different row grains:

• Map: unique(segment_id, situation_id, version).
• Evidence: unique(source_system, source_record_id, excerpt_hash, source_version).
• Insight: unique(map_id, normalized_claim_hash, version).
• Action: unique(insight_id, action_type, destination_project_id, version).

These are design recommendations, not ClickUp-published fields. Keep citation-level evidence records even when multiple citations support the same insight. A source excerpt can support several insights, and separate annotation runs can produce different suggestions from the same evidence.

If evidence is uncertain or contradictory, the next step may be research rather than product implementation. Measure operating quality through sourced-insight coverage, review completion, duplicate follow-up rate, and time from accepted insight to an owned decision. These measures describe workflow maintenance; they do not establish that a template caused a business outcome.

Practical selection checklist

Before standardizing on an existing ClickUp workflow, review its fields, permissions, and follow-up process with a ClickUp workflow audit. Confirm current role and plan conditions for the features your team intends to use.