Just running a test

Phase One

Empathize

what? why? how?

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Intro

why?

how?

what?

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TOOLS

Intro

When you start with the Design Thinking approach, you sort of fall into the first phase: EMPATHIZE The main goal of this phase is to understand people in the context of your Design Thinking challenge.

Just to give a brief structure, three questions might be useful to dive into some of the details:

What? – is Empathy in the context of Design Thinking

Why? – can become Empathy important?

How? – can empathy be included in the process?

What? – is Empathy in the context of Design Thinking

But what is the empathy phase?

"Empathize is at the heart of a human-centered design process," which means understanding the way people do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what matters to them. In a close-up: empathy is the ability to see the world through the eyes of others.

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Why? – can become Empathy important?

But why should I empathize at all?

As a design thinker, the problems you're trying to solve are rarely your own - they're those of a particular group of people; to design for them, you need to develop empathy for who they are and what's important to them.Simply put, empathy puts you in a position to make decisions in the midst of your audience, rather than sitting in a boardroom making decisions with little knowledge. Depending on time constraints, you should gather as much information as possible at this stage to build the foundation for the product.

further

How? – can empathy be included in the process?

But how do I start to empathize or how can I empathize to gain the right insights?

First of all, there are different approaches to empathize with your client, user or customer. But they can all be summarized in four short fields:

Observe

Engage

Watch and listen

Observe users and their behavior in the context of their lives.

Observe

As often as possible, conduct observations in relevant contexts in addition to interviews. Some of the most powerful insights come from noticing a discrepancy between what someone says and what they do.

Observe

from concrete observations to abstract motivation

Sometimes we call this technique "interviewing," but really it should feel more like a conversation.

Engage

Prepare some questions you want to ask, but expect the conversation to deviate from those questions. Keep the conversation casual only. ...

Engage

Watch

&

"If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself"?

Listen

Well, we agree with that - more or less. To build empathy with your users, you need to make sure they're on the same page as you when you talk about your intentions and draw parallels between your product and other products they're familiar with.

Watch & Listen

EMpathize

tools

collection of tools

Tools

Empathy Map

Beginner's Mindset

Extreme User

The five WHYs

Emotional journey map

Empathy map

to help you empathise and synthesise your observations from the research

Empathy map

An Empathy Map allows us to sum up our learning from engagements with people in the field of design research. The map provides four major areas in which to focus our attention on, thus providing an overview of a person’s experience Empathy maps are also great as a background for the construction of the personas that you would often want to create later.

watch the video

Assume a beginner's mindset

in order to put aside biases, so that you can approach a design challenge afresh

HOW to assume a beginner’s mindset

• Don't judge.
• Question everthing.
• Be truly curious.
• Find patterns.
• Listen. Really!!!

Extreme users

to understand their needs and gain insights about their lives

HOW to engage extreme users

• Determine who's extreme

• Engage

• Look at the extreme in all of us

The Five whys

The aim of the method is to raise awareness of a specific problem or situatioights about their lives...

How to do it?

1. Formulate the problem to be questioned in one sentence on the whiteboard.
2. Answer the question about the 'why' together in the team.
3. Write the answer in a complete sentence.
4. Convert the previous answer into the next 'why' question.
5. Repeat five times or until you have reached the cause of the problem.

Emotional Journey Map

is about mapping and analyzing the emotional highs and lows of a user while dealing with a product...

How to do it?

1. Choose the type of customer and the scenario you want to investigate.
2. Define the actions and steps within this scenario.
3. Determine the qualitative highs and lows regarding user-friendliness during each action. If necessary, use results from the research.
4. Connect the individual evaluation points to form a line.
5. Analyse the low points of the journey and generate improvements.