The Character Map Canvas is a Creative Empathy tool, designed to help understand the emotions and circumstances a person encounters during their journey to achieve their goal or objective
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The canvas provides a visual framework for mapping a character’s main hallmarks. It’s great to use alone but works best in a multidisciplinary workshop setting.
You can use this canvas digitally or plot it as a large poster for use with sticky notes. And while it’s helpful to converge research insights into one character, there are two important things to keep in mind.
Evidence is Key
First, no matter which framework you use to create your character, it must be based on real evidence. Otherwise, instead of articulating customers’ needs and desires, it will articulate your (team’s) own bias and assumptions.
Stories Bring Characters to Life
Second, this is a great format for collecting thoughts, but sticky notes on a canvas won’t provoke empathy in people. You need stories for that.
Creative Empathy
Creative Empathy is a process-agnostic toolkit for connecting with people’s deepest needs in any creative project.