Design Thinking

EMPATHIZE

Understanding the problem

Course Content for ENT3607 Innovation by Design - Syllabus

Design Thinking > How Might We > Team > Plan > Empathize > Synthesize > Reframe > Ideate > Select > Build > Pitch

Question your beliefs and assumptions!

Empathy is the foundation on which Design Thinking is built. You can’t develop a successful solution without first understanding the problem from all perspectives.

We are not yet considering solutions!

Empathy and Ethnographic Research

Empathy involves putting yourself in the shoes of the person you wish to help. Fortunately there are long established tools from the Social Sciences that designed to help you do just that.

Ethnography is a qualitative research method, rooted in anthropology, where researchers immerse themselves in a specific community to provide an in-depth, holistic understanding of its people, behaviors, and social interactions from the participants' own perspectives.

Ethnographic research methods include:

  • Desk Research: gaining empathy for the problem through online research and phone interviews, gathering information about the challenge and possible solutions others have implemented.

  • Observational Research: noticing and documenting the interactions between people and the environments that are central to your Design Challenge.

  • Stakeholder Interviews: Conversing with stakeholders directly, asking important questions related to the problem.

  • Surveys: Conducted online with tools such as Google Forms, or Survey Monkey, surveys can collect opinions and experiences from hundreds of stakeholders. Although not as personal, flexible, or detailed, surveys can allow for gaining a foundation of general knowledge and openions.

  • Focus Groups: Conducted in person or online with tools like Zoom, focus groups are a great way to include a group discussion regarding the problem in a manner that is more dynamic than surveys, yet not as personal as one-on-one interviews.

It is important that for each of the above activities the researcher properly prepare, identifying goals for the activity, preparing instructions and questions, and be ready to take copious notes. Data can be collected in notes, and in photographs. Consider recording Zoom sessions for future reference.

Empathy Tools

Other useful tools designed to empathize with stakeholders and customers come from the field of Marketing. These methods are designed to identify stakeholder desires, needs and pain points - frustrating areas where you might ease the pain by providing a solution.

  • A Persona is developed in order to generalize the needs of many primary stakeholders studied into one fictitious character to whom we can more personally relate. For example, we might create a young urban professional named Stacy Shatner who bikes to the office each day. Stacy is environmentally conscious, she is fit and health-conscious, she is 24 years old and works as a graphic designer for a fashion clothing brand. We could use Stacy as an example of the commuters we are concerned for as we develop bike lanes in the city, or design a new line of commuter gear.

  • A Journey Map is used to analyze the activities of a Persona as related to the scope of the problem. In the above example, we might analyze the step-by-step process our bike commuter Stacy takes from the moment she leaved her apartment to the time she sits down at her desk at work - how she stores her bike, what gear she wears, the route and the experiences she has along the way, where she parks her bike at work, etc. We could then analyze pain points along the way that our design can address.

Activities

  • Research - Divide and Conquer

    In-class team activity followed by individual homework

    45 minute team activity
    Several hours of individual homework

    It’s time for your team to learn all they can about your Design Challenge and its stakeholders through ethnographic research.

    1. Develop a Team Research Plan

    1a. Define your research questions - what is it you need to learn more about?

    1b. Define which methods you will use to answer your research questions. Be sure to use all the methods listed above with a possible exception of observation.

    Note: Be sure to interview experts as well as stakeholders so you can understand what solutions have already been tried.

    1c. Assign research tasks to each member of the team. You might want to partner up on some research tasks such as interviews.

    2 Conduct your individual research

    Make sure to have an organized approach to your research. Each team member works independently completing their research tasks. Make note of insights that you gain and the sources of your information in a RESEARCH JOURNAL. Insights are “ah-ha moments” where you learn something that could be useful in your problem solving. Also make note of where you found your insights - names of websites and URLS’s or people you talked to and their credentials. Also collect photos and media if helpful to your research Each team member should collect at least ten useful insights to bring to the table.

  • Create a Persona

    In-class team activity
    30 minutes

    Use a Persona Card to capture the characteristics of your Primary Stakeholder.

    Find a photo online or in a magazine that ideally represents what your primary stakeholder looks like as they encounter the design challenge. Make sure it is a person you can empathize with. No cartoon characters or known celebrities.

    Tape the photo on your whiteboard, or copy and paste a photo on your virtual whiteboard in position as it is on the Persona Card.

    Give your Persona a Name, and Description (ie. Bob Foreman, a Freshman IT major) - no room for silliness here. Provide a realistic name that you could relate to.

    Make up the remaining information about your persona including a quote, a more detailed description of his or her characteristics (is. shy, first time away from home, etc), motivations, goals and behaviors. You might use sticky notes for these final three areas in order to get independent ideas from group members.

  • Create a Journey Map

    In-class team activity
    30-minutes

    Use a Journey Map to track your Persona through the design challenge journey.

    Some virtual whiteboards provide Journey Mapping tools that can be utilized. Or you can build one from scratch with sticky notes.

    Consider the scope and detail of the journey. A journey map can cover journeys that last years (i.e. the college experience), minutes (the online check-out process), or any time in between depending on what you are studying.

    Map out the steps of your Primary Stakeholder as he or she experiences the problem you are studying. Place each step of the journey as column headings for your map. For example, if your Challenge has something to do with a dining experience, the steps might be - make reservation, drive to cafe, find parking, enter cafe, get seated, select from menu, etc.

    In columns below your steps, use sticky notes that detail what occurs for each step in regards to row labels: Persona Goals, Touch Points, Organization Actions, Barriers, Enablers, and Insights and Opportunities.

    Graph your Persona's emotions for each step of the journey.

    Make note of significant insights gained from the Journey Map - points of tension and success. The Journey Map assists in identifying where to concentrate your efforts as you develop a solution in later steps.

Check your understanding of Empathy

  1. What is Ethnography?

  2. List five Ethnographic Research Methods?

  3. What is valuable about developing a Team Research Plan?

  4. Why do you think we use the divide and conquer approach to Ethnographic Research?

  5. Why is it important for each team member to collect and document research insights including the source of the information?

  6. What are “point points”?

  7. What is a Persona and how is it used?

  8. What is a Journey Map and why is it valuable?

Resources

Videos