Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure - The Global Goals

Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities - The Global Goals

Design thinking process
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What is empathy?
• Help us gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of people’s
emotional and physical needs
• Understand how things have an impact on their lives generally,
specifically within the contexts being investigated
• Empathic research is not concerned with facts about people (such as
their weight or the amount of food they eat), but more about their
motivations and thoughts (for instance, why they would rather sit at
home watching TV than go out for a jog).
• Observe, engage and empathize with your user to
understand them on a psychological and emotional level
including their experiences, motivations, needs and
challenges
• Set aside their assumptions and gather real insights
about the user
Typical activities
1. Observations: You’ll go where your users go and see what they care about
2. Qualitative interviews: You’ll hold one-on-one interviews with a handful of your users to
understand their attitudes on the topic you are exploring. Asking someone to tell a story
about the last time they experienced the problem you are investigating provides a rich
description that highlights details you might not have otherwise considered.
3. Immersions: Step into your user’s shoes so you can feel and experience their day-to-day
4. Survey: a mindset geared at being inclusive in how you design your research studies as
well as the thinking about your research from the perspective of the person answering the
questions.
Things to pay attention to
• Personal details: profession, age, location, etc.
• Interesting stories: what was the most memorable and surprising story
you heard?
• Motivations: what they cared about the most, what motivated them
• Frustrations: What pain points, barriers, confusions, or errors they
experienced
• Interaction: the way they interacted with the environment
• Remaining questions: what you would like to explore in your next
observation or interview?
 saying and doing?
seeing?

hearing?
thinking and feeling?
 Empathy Interviews

Some questions to ask yourself before

selecting subjects for empathy interviews:
• How many people do I need to interview?
• Who do I recruit?
• How do I know who the target user is?
• How do I recruit the people to interview?
Empathy Interviews

How to conduct an empathy interview

• Interview in pair: it allows one person to identify areas to dig
deeper into the conversation, while the other takes detailed notes
including the interviewee’s non-verbal language
• Pursue tangents: empathy interviews don’t follow a typical
question and answer format. Topics that generate emotion for
participants are great to follow.
Empathy Interviews

How to conduct an empathy interview

• Use a beginner’s mindset: never assume you know the answer.
Always ask why.
• Ask neutral questions: don’t ask questions in a way that implies
there is a correct answer
Incorrect: What frustrations do you have about the new policy?
Correct: What do you think about the new policy?
Empathy Interviews

How to conduct an empathy interview

• Encourage storytelling: Storytelling allows you to dig deeper by
preventing generic responses.
Incorrect: Do you like your car?
Correct: Tell me about the last time you drove your car.
• Observe body language: certain gestures and movements can tell you
how someone feels without them needing to say it.
E.g.: crossed-arms, abnormal posture, facial expression, tilted head, etc
Empathy Interviews

How to conduct an empathy interview

• Embrace silence: A period of silence will happen in an interview, but
let the participant break the silence themselves, without you. After long
pauses, some deeper insights may reveal.
• Avoid binary questions: Binary questions can be answered in one
word.
Incorrect: What frustrations do you have about the new policy?
Correct: What do you think about the new policy?
Survey
 1) Dichotomous Questions
Bad vs Good Survey Questions E.g: 1. Do you enjoy using our product?
• Yes
• No
2. Was this article helpful?
• A Likert scale question is a type of survey question that allows • Yes
you to measure a respondent’s disposition towards specific • No
assertions in a research context. With a Likert scale question, you 2) Double-Barreled Question
can find out the extent to which respondents agree or disagree
with different statements in your research. E.g: a. Do you find our product interesting and useful?
Examples of Likert Scale Questions in Surveys b. How satisfied are you with our customer service
and service delivery?
1. How satisfied are you with our customer experience?
Loaded question: question with inherent biases
• Very satisfied
E.g.: Have you stopped smoking before the incident happened?
• Somewhat satisfied ->This question assumes that the respondent smokes which may not be
• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied the case. Providing a yes/no answer to this question already confirms the
• Somewhat dissatisfied intrinsic bias of the respondent’s smoking habit.
• Very dissatisfied 3) Leading Questions: subtly prompts the respondent to provide
2. I enjoyed using this product. answers in line with predetermined responses
• Strongly agree e.g.: How well did our excellent services meet your needs?
• Agree 4) Negative Question: requires a negative answer for a positive
• Neither agree nor disagree response and a positive answer for a negative response.
• Disagree e.g.: I don’t think your product is not too expensive.
• Strongly agree nor disagree – Yes
– No
• A multiple-choice question is a type of close-ended question that 5) Vague Question: uncertain or unclear. This type of question does
provides respondents with a fixed set of answer options they can not seek a specific response and it is usually too broad or poorly
choose from defined
e.g.: Do you think people enjoy using our product?
Ways to document your findings

You may want to visualize your research and

design work using the following graphic
organizers:
• User persona
• Empathy map
• Journey map
• Storyboard
Journey map
Storyboard
a visual representation of the user's journey that don't correlate to
the product's user interface, which will later be designed based on
the journey depicted in the storyboard.

Storyboards Toolkit activity - Enterprise Design Thinking (ibm.com)

Empathy map
What is the customer (persona) thinking and
feeling?
What is the customer hearing?
What or who influences the customer?
Is your customer easy to influence?
Where does the customer get their information?
What information channel does your customer use the
most?

What is the customer seeing?

Does your customer spend more time in the public or in
private?
What does your customer’s environment look like?
How does the customer interact with their environment?

What is the customer saying and doing?

How does the customer portray themselves in front of
others?
Words he uses when talking?
Information withhold or leave out when sharing with
others?
What is the gap between what they say and how they act?

What are the customer’s pains?

What obstacles does the customer need to overcome?
Why hasn’t the customer been able to reach their goals?
What frustrations are on the horizon for the customer?
A persona profile helps you get a
better understanding of the person
you’re really trying to help, it is also
a good reference tool.

Who are they?

What motivates them?
What is their goal?
What barriers exist?
…
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to investigate further to understand potential causes or paths forward.
References
Lewrick, M., Link, P., & Leifer, L. (2018a). The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital
Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems (1st ed.).
Wiley.
Stevens, E. (2021, August 5). What Is Design Thinking? A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide.
CareerFoundry. https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-design-thinking-
everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started/#what-is-the-purpose-of-design-thinking
Lucas, F. (2018, June 26). Techniques for Empathy Interviews in Design Thinking. Web Design
Envato Tuts+. https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/techniques-of-empathy-
interviews-in-design-thinking--cms-31219
Adam Fard Studio. (2020, December 1). Empathetic design: the first stage of design thinking.
Adam Fard UX Studio | UI UX Design for Startups & Leading Brands.
https://adamfard.com/blog/empathetic-design