Just running a test

Empathize

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Phase One

what? why? how?

index

Intro

TOOLS

what?

why?

how?

Intro

What? – is Empathy in the context of Design Thinking

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

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

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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?

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.

But why should I empathize at all?

further

To empathize is to research. So, you should constantly remind yourself to question everything you observe instead of judging. Also, listen to others with an open mind, rather than focusing on points that confirm your biases. Since our biases naturally creep into our view of the world and the situations we consider, as designers - or design thinkers - we need to catch and overcome those biases before they distort our research. Only when you are completely objective can you see through the eyes of your users and best interpret their views. You are the experts. You need to understand users' dimensions of use (e.g., tasks) and their feelings (e.g., motivations) before you can work toward engaging them through your design.

How? – can empathy be included in the process?

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:

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

Engage

Observe

Watch and listen

Observe

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

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

"What?" You describe your observations. "How?" You analyze how users do things (e.g., with difficulty). "Why?" You make assumptions about users' emotions and motivations.

Engage

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

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

• Let your interviewees tell you stories, and always ask "why" to discover deeper meaning. Engagement can come from both short on-demand encounters and longer scheduled conversations.
• Engaging extreme users - Find the extreme cases within your customer base to identify the highest level of user needs, problems, and problem-solving methods. This allows you to identify the full range of issues that typical, non-extreme users might face. If you can satisfy an extreme user, you can satisfy any user.
• In addition, it is always a good idea to conduct interviews with people who have hands-on experience with what you are trying to develop. When interviewing, try to put yourself in your users' shoes. You REALLY want to know what drives them, what frustrates them, and what their values are regarding the product.

Engage

&

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

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

Watch & Listen

• Watch and listen. Of course, you can and should combine observation and engagement.
• Ask someone to show you how he does a task. Have him physically go through the steps and explain why he is doing what he is doing. Ask the person to express what is going through his or her mind while performing a task or interacting with an object. Have a conversation in the context of a person's home or workplace - so many stories are embodied in artifacts.
• Use the environment to ask deeper questions.
• We like to simplify things so we can draw patterns between what we create and other products we are familiar with.
• Do you want to create something revolutionary? Get in the habit of using analogies. This will help you understand what you're trying to accomplish, and it will also help you find the common denominators between what you're building, the problem at hand, and your target audience.

tools

EMpathize

collection of tools

Tools

Extreme User

The five WHYs

Empathy Map

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Beginner's Mindset

Emotional journey map

Empathy map

to help you empathise and synthesise your observations from the research

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 experienceEmpathy maps are also great as a background for the construction of the personas that you would often want to create later.

Empathy map

watch the video

Assume a beginner's mindset

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

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

HOW to assume a beginner’s mindset

Designers (as humans in general) tend to carry some baggage in regards to some situations, challenges, problems, and opportunities – think of these things as shortcuts in a sense-maker's toolkit. These prior experiences, perceptions, assumptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes can restrict the amount of empathy a designer is able to build for his or her users. Assume a beginner’s mindset in order to put aside these biases, so that you can approach a design challenge afresh.

Extreme users

to understand their needs and gain insights about their lives

• Determine who's extreme

Determining who is an extreme user starts with considering what aspect of your design challenge you want explore to an extreme. List a number of facets to explore within your design space. Then think of people who may be extreme in those facets. For example, if you are redesigning the grocery store shopping experience you might consider the following aspects: how groceries are gathered, how payment is made, how purchase choices are made, how people get their groceries home, etc. Then to consider the aspect of gathering groceries, for example, you might talk to professional shoppers, someone who uses a shopping cart to gather recyclables (and thus overloads the cart), product pullers for online buyers, people who bring their kids shopping with them, or someone who doesn’t go to grocery stores (and ask why).

HOW to engage extreme users

• Engage

Observe and interview your extreme user as you would other folks. Look for work-arounds (or other extreme behaviors) that can serve as inspiration and uncover insights.

• Look at the extreme in all of us

Look to extreme users for inspiration and to spur wild ideas. Then work to understand what resonates with the primary users you are designing for.

Designers engage with users (people) to understand their needs and gain insights about their lives. We also draw inspiration from their work-arounds and frameworks. When you speak with and observe extreme users the needs are amplified and their work-arounds are often more notable. This helps you pull out meaningful needs that may not pop when engaging with the middle of the bell curve. However, the needs that are uncovered through extreme users are often needs of a wider population.

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.

Determining who is an extreme user starts with considering what aspect of your design challenge you want explore to an extreme. List a number of facets to explore within your design space. Then think of people who may be extreme in those facets. For example, if you are redesigning the grocery store shopping experience you might consider the following aspects: how groceries are gathered, how payment is made, how purchase choices are made, how people get their groceries home, etc. Then to consider the aspect of gathering groceries, for example, you might talk to professional shoppers, someone who uses a shopping cart to gather recyclables (and thus overloads the cart), product pullers for online buyers, people who bring their kids shopping with them, or someone who doesn’t go to grocery stores (and ask why).

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?

The 5 Why method is a simple interview technique in which you ask fpr the background of the problem. Often the apparent cause of a problem is not the real cause, but just another symptom in the same chain of problems. The interviewee should be asked several times about the "why" until one arrives at the so-called pain point.

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.

Determining who is an extreme user starts with considering what aspect of your design challenge you want explore to an extreme. List a number of facets to explore within your design space. Then think of people who may be extreme in those facets. For example, if you are redesigning the grocery store shopping experience you might consider the following aspects: how groceries are gathered, how payment is made, how purchase choices are made, how people get their groceries home, etc. Then to consider the aspect of gathering groceries, for example, you might talk to professional shoppers, someone who uses a shopping cart to gather recyclables (and thus overloads the cart), product pullers for online buyers, people who bring their kids shopping with them, or someone who doesn’t go to grocery stores (and ask why).

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?

The 5 Why method is a simple interview technique in which you ask fpr the background of the problem. Often the apparent cause of a problem is not the real cause, but just another symptom in the same chain of problems. The interviewee should be asked several times about the "why" until one arrives at the so-called pain point.

Recursos