XPlane Empathy Map

Recently, students in entrepreneurship began utilizing an amazing tool to assist the development of a business model; The Business Model Canvas. 

The Business Model Canvas focuses on visually depicting core elements of a business model in an effort to establish clear and consistent communication between all stakeholders of the business.  The model itself is an extremely effective teaching tool and encompasses many elements of the Learning Focused Schools model.

One foundational concept of the BMC is putting people first.  The model's first building block defines Customer Segments.  In the past, the challenge has been to provide a tangible method of understanding buyer behavior, and customers' pain points.  This is where the BMC, specifically the XPlane Empathy Map enhanced student understanding.

The empathy map forces a student to recognize and understand what truly matters to a potential customer.  I chose to utilize projection technology to emphasize this concept, and to create a concrete example of its use.

The empathy map was projected on the whiteboard and students were prompted to think of a potential customer for Microsoft Office products.  Then, using sticky notes, students responded to the prompts of the empathy map and placed the notes to the whiteboard.

Following this practice, students composed a customer profile using the data created by the class.

In addition, students were permitted to take pictures of our class-created empathy map and can use it as they prepare to develop an empathy map for their own businesses.