5. Empathy & Interview P1
Understanding your users, the goals they need to achieve, and the challenges they face is a prerequisite for building design solutions.
Empathy
What is Empathy?
According to Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang, What Is Empathy and Why Is It So Important in Design Thinking?
Empathy is our ability to see the world through other people's eyes — to see what they see, feel what they feel and experience things as they do.
We achieve this empathic state as we put aside our own preconceived ideas about the world and choose to understand the ideas, thoughts and needs of others instead.
IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit explains that:
💡 In the world of design thinking, empathy is a “deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for.”
The different between Empathy and Sympathy
Empathy is often confused with sympathy — a mistake you definitely don’t want to make in the world of design thinking!
This video of Brené Brown on Empathy explains the different between Empathy and Sympathy.
© Brené Brown and RSA Events, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Sympathy is about your ability to show concern for the well-being of another. Sympathy often involves a sense of detachment and superiority; when we sympathize, we tend to project feelings of pity and sorrow onto another person.
To put it simply:
Empathy: Builds connection by sharing and understanding others' feelings.
Sympathy: Limits connection by highlighting the problem but staying detached with "At least...""
How can we Empathize better?
3 main ideas/factors that Mr. Chung gave us from UXF class are to:
Taking others' perspectives: Putting aside your own biases and truly imagining what the other person is experiencing.
Active listening: Fully focusing on and engaging with what someone is saying, including non-verbal cues.
Avoiding judgment: Keeping an open mind and accepting people without making quick assessments or jumping to conclusions.
Empathize Methods
Empathy is simply crucial to a human-centered design process such as design thinking as it helps you set aside your own assumptions about the world to gain insight into your users and their needs instead.
The Empathize stage of the design thinking process is a time for you to collect as many experiences, insights and observations as possible, so you can build a solid foundation for the rest of your design project.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0
Interaction Design Foundation favor eleven empathize methods to gain empathy with users and get a deep & meaningful insights:
Assume a Beginner's Mindset: Approach with an open mind, free from biases.
Photo & Video Based Observations: Use photos and videos to capture real-life situations, providing valuable insights that might be missed through written notes alone.
Personal Photo & Video Journals: Document personal experiences through photos and videos to reflect on patterns, behaviors, and insights over time.
Conduct Interviews with Empathy: Engage in interviews by genuinely understanding and sharing the feelings of others, leading to deeper insights.
Bodystorm: Physically act out situations to explore and solve problems, gaining a better understanding of user experiences through role-play.
Engage with Extreme users: Interact with users who have extreme needs or behaviors to uncover unique insights and opportunities that might be overlooked in average users.
The Five Whys Methods: Ask "why" five times to drill down into the root cause of a problem, revealing underlying issues that need to be addressed.
Journeys Mapping: Visualize the entire experience of a user with a product or service, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Embrace Analogies: Use analogies to relate unfamiliar problems to familiar ones, facilitating creative problem-solving by drawing parallels.
The What-How-Why Methods: Break down observations into what is happening, how it's happening, and why it’s happening, to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior.
Capture & Share Inspirational Stories: Gather and share stories that inspire and ignite creative ideas within the team.
Empathy is Crucial to Business Success
A lack of empathy can result in product failure. You need to gain essential insights about your users if you want to remain relevant in the market.
“People ignore design that ignores people.” - Frank Chimero, author of The Shape of Design
When you design products and services, you should aim for the sweet spot between feasibility, viability and desirability. This can only be achieved when you have built empathy for your users.
User Interview
User Interview
What Are User Interviews?
Interviews can be a great way to empathize with your users because interviews can give you an in-depth understanding of the users’ values, perceptions, and experiences.
In this article of User Interviews from Interaction Design Foundation, according to them:
User interviews are a qualitative research method where researchers engage in a dialogue with participants to understand their mental models, motivations, pain points, and latent needs.
💡 “To find ideas, find problems, to find problems, talk to people.” – Julie Zhou, former VP, Product Design at Facebook, author of The Making of a Manager
Steps for Conducting a User Interview
1. Prepare
Interview Preparation: Form a concise, concrete goal for your user interviews - one that’s related to a specific aspect of your users’ behaviors or motivations is ideal.
Recruiting Participants: Ensure to recruit a representative sample of users for the interviews, so you should start with your user personas and try to find interview participants that match them.
Preparing the Interview Environment: Ensure the setting is comfortable, quiet, and free from distractions to help the interviewee feel at ease. For online interviews, test the software, check audio/video, and ensure a stable internet connection. Provide clear joining instructions.
2. Interview
Opening and Breaking the Ice; Start with light conversation or general questions to make the interviewee comfortable and set a positive tone.
Always Make the Interviewee Feel Safe: Establish trust by ensuring confidentiality and respect throughout the conversation.
Follow the Scripted but Be Flexible: Use a prepared script as a guide, but be open to exploring unexpected insights by allowing the conversation to flow naturally.
Active Listening: Pay full attention to the interviewee, showing interest through nodding, eye contact, and verbal affirmations.
3. Analyze & Report
Transcript: Document the entire conversation word-for-word to ensure accuracy in analysis and reporting.
Detail analyze: Carefully read through the transcript, linking answers to specific questions. Print out the transcript and highlight key points if needed for clarity.
Report: Summarize the findings in a clear and structured report, providing insights and conclusions based on the interview data.
