Customer Empathy Exercise

Pause and deeply empathize with your users before continuing any work. Think through these questions to clarify who you're building for and how to serve them best.

The Customer

Who is our ideal customer?

• What's their role, context, situation?
• What brings them to us right now?

What job are they trying to get done?

• What's the outcome they actually want?
• What would "done" look like for them?

Their Journey

What's their mental state at each step of the way before getting to this point?

• What are they feeling when they first arrive?
• What questions are in their head?
• Where might they feel confused, frustrated, or stuck?
• When do they feel momentum and progress?

What do they care about?

• What matters most to them right now?
• What would make them think "yes! This is it!"?

What do they NOT care about?

• What features/details are we obsessing over that they'd skip right past?
• What complexity can we remove entirely?

Delivering Value

How can we best help them?

• What's the single most valuable thing we can do for them?

How do we make them succeed?

• What does success look like from their perspective?
• What's blocking them from getting there RIGHT NOW?

How do we make their lives easier?

• What friction can we eliminate?
• What can we automate or do for them?

The Magic

How do we get them to the "aha" moment as fast and easily as humanly possible?

• What IS the "aha" moment?
• What's the shortest path to it?
• What's currently in the way?

How can we delight them most?

• What would make them smile or say "wow!"?
• What unexpected value could we add?

How can we make this as seamless and magical as humanly possible?

• What if this just... worked?
• What would "effortless" look like?

How can we make them "wow!" and provide MOST of the value in the SHORTEST time with the LOWEST effort?

• What's our 80/20?
• What's the minimum they need to do to get maximum value?

---

Write your answers. Be specific. Challenge assumptions. Think from their shoes, not ours.