EMPATHY

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/empathize

What is Empathize?

Empathize is the first stage of the design thinking process. Design teams conduct

research to get personal grasps of their users’ needs.

They set aside assumptions to obtain insights into the users’ world by observing and
consulting with users. This way, they can understand users’ experiences,
motivations and problems.

“If you want to build a product that’s relevant to people, you need to put yourself in
their shoes.”

— Jack Dorsey, Programmer, entrepreneur, co-founder of Twitter & founder of

Square

IN design thinking this is one of the key steps and it is very important to Empathize
with Real People – Leave Your Assumptions Outside

Empathize is design thinking’s first stage for a reason. It’s the first step on the road
to thoughtfully designed products that prove the designers built with a
compassionate eye for their users.

Empathy is a naturally occurring characteristic which people have in varying

degrees.

However, they can improve their ability to empathize as a soft skill. Anyone in a
design team will have preconceived ideas about the many situations people find
themselves in as users. It’s unavoidable – you can’t unlearn your life experience.
Therefore, you should always adopt a beginner’s mindset to be able to view and
analyze situations with users objectively.
To empathize is to research. So, you should constantly remind yourself to question
everything you observe instead of judging.

You should also listen to others open-mindedly rather than focus on points that
confirm your biases.

Because our biases will naturally creep into how we view the world and the situations
we consider, as designers—or design thinkers—we must catch and overcome these
before they distort our research.

You must become fully objective before you can start to see through your users’
eyes and interpret their viewpoints optimally. They are the experts.

You must understand the users’ dimensions of use (e.g., tasks) and their feelings
(e.g., motivations) before you can work towards delighting them through your design.
As a design thinking our motive is to Empathize to Get the Right Insights while
interacting with the users.

To do this, there are different methods that the design thinkers follow. Some of them
include

The How, What, Why method

Observing real users. Ask these questions to shift from concrete observations to
abstract motivations:

“What?” – You detail your observations. What are the users currently doing?

What do they do when they encounter a certain situation / product?

What are their thoughts, fears, motivations, emotions when going though a certain
situation or process.

What are their reactions?

“How?” – You analyze how users do things (e.g., with difficulty).

How do the users/consumers tackle a certain situation?

How do they find a solution for their current problems or issues faced?

How is their behaviour while interacting with a certain device/service or solution?

“Why?” – A design thinker makes educated guesses about the users’ emotions and
motivations.

Why would the users or customers react in a certain way?

Why do they have certain preferences?

Why a certain product or service cause delight or despair among the users ?

By critically analysing this information the design team is able to map the mindset of
the user.
Conducting photo- and/or video-based studies in users’ natural environments or
sessions with the design team or consultants – You record these users while they try
to solve an issue you propose to resolve with your design.

Personal photo/video journals – You ask users to record their own experiences with
approaching a problem. These may capture their pain points more accurately.

Interviewing users –The team has an in-depth discussion to first find the right
questions to ask in a generally structured and natural flow. Then, you can directly
ask users for their insights in an intimate setting where they can respond earnestly to
open-ended questions.

Engaging with extreme users – You find the extreme cases within your userbase to
determine the greatest degrees of users’ needs, problems and problem-solving
methods. You can then see the full scope of problems which typical, non-extreme
users might run into. If you can satisfy an extreme user, you can satisfy any user.

Analogous empathy – Your team finds effective analogies to draw parallels between
users’ problems and problems in other fields. This way, you can get insights you’d
otherwise overlook.
Sharing inspiring stories – Your team shares stories about what they have observed
so you draw meaning from these and note fascinating details.

Immersion tool is also Bodystorming – You wear equipment (e.g., goggles, gloves,
torso attachments) to gain first-hand experience of your users in their environment.

Empathy maps and customer journey maps – Your team should have at least one of
these as a reference point to appreciate the users’ perspectives.

Personas to establish accurate portraits/profiles of users who’ll interact with your

product.

Empathy Map – Why and How to Use It

An Empathy map will help you understand your user’s needs while you develop a
deeper understanding of the persons you are designing for. There are many
techniques you can use to develop this kind of empathy. An Empathy Map is just
one tool that can help you empathise and synthesise your observations from the
research phase, and draw out unexpected insights about your user’s needs.

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.

An Empathy Map consists of four quadrants. The four quadrants reflect four key
traits, which the user demonstrated/possessed during the observation/research
stage. The four quadrants refer to what the user: Said, Did, Thought, and Felt.

It’s fairly easy to determine what the user said and did. However, determining what
they thought and felt should be based on careful observations and analysis as to
how they behaved and responded to certain activities, suggestions, conversations,
etc.

Best practice

Step 1: Fill out the Empathy Map

Lay the four quadrants out on a table, draw them on paper or on a whiteboard.
Review your notes, pictures, audio, and video from your research/fieldwork and fill
out each of the four quadrants while defining and synthesising:

What did the user SAY? Write down significant quotes and key words that the user
said.

What did the user DO? Describe which actions and behaviours you noticed or insert
pictures or drawing.

What did the user THINK? Dig deeper. What do you think that your user might be
thinking? What are their motivations, their goals, their needs, their desires? What
does this tell you about his or her beliefs?

How did the user FEEL? What emotions might your user be feeling? Take subtle
cues like body language and their choice of words and tone of voice into account.

Step 2: Synthesise NEEDS

Synthesise the user’s needs based on your Empathy Map. This will help you to
define your design challenge.

Needs are verbs, i.e. activities and desires. Needs are not nouns, which will instead
lead you to define solutions.

Identify needs directly from the user traits you noted. Identify needs based on
contradictions between two traits, such as a disconnection between what a user says
and what the user does.

One way to identify the users need is to use Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of

Needs to help you understand and define which underlying needs your user has. In
1943, Maslow published his paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation, ” in which he
proposed that human needs form a hierarchy that can be visualised in the shape of a
pyramid with the largest, most fundamental physiological levels of needs at the
bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top.

Maslow suggested that humans must first fulfill their most basic physiological needs,
such as eating and sleeping, before fulfilling higher-level needs such as safety,
love, esteem and finally self-actualisation. The most basic level of needs must be
met before the individual will strongly desire or focus motivation on the higher level
needs.
Different levels of motivation can occur at any time in the human mind, but Maslow
focussed on identifying the basic and strongest types of motivation and the order in
which they can be met.

When a lower level of need fulfilment is not in place, it is technically possible to be

fulfilled at a higher level. However, Maslow argues that this is an unstable fulfilment.
For example, if you’re starving, it doesn’t matter if you’re the world’s leading User
Experience designer, because eventually your hunger is going to overwhelm any
satisfaction you get from your professional status. That’s why we naturally seek to
stabilise the lowest level of the hierarchy that is uncertain before we try to retain
higher levels.

Consult all five layers in Maslow’s Pyramid to help you define which needs your user
is primarily focused on fulfilling. Start reflecting on how your product or service can
help fulfill some of those needs.

Write down your user’s needs.

The Hierarchy of Needs

Step 3: Synthesise INSIGHTS

An “Insight” is your remarkable realization that can help you to solve the current
design challenge you’re facing.

Look to synthesise major insights, especially from contradictions between two user
attributes. It can be found within one quadrant or in two different quadrants. You can
also synthesise insights by asking yourself: “Why?” when you notice strange, tense,
or surprising behaviour.

Write down your insights.

What are Customer Journey Maps?

Customer journey maps are used to map the relationship between a customer and
an organization over time and across all channels on which they interact with the
business. Design teams use customer journey maps to see how customer
experiences meet customers’ expectations and find areas where they need to
improve designs.

Customer Journey Maps – Tell Customer Stories

Customer journey maps are research-based tools which design teams use to reveal
typical customer experiences over time and visualize the many dimensions and
factors involved.

These enable brands to learn more about target users.

Team members examine tasks and questions (e.g., what-ifs) regarding how a design
meets or fails to meet customers’ needs over time when they encounter a product or
service.

Therefore, these maps should be detail-rich timelines that show the most important
sub-tasks and events. Over this timeline framework, you add insights of what
customers think and feel when proceeding along the timeline. The map should
consist of:

A timescale – a defined journey period (e.g., 1 week) including selected areas from
awareness to conversion and beyond.

Scenarios – the context and sequence of events in which a user/customer must

achieve a goal (e.g., a user wants to buy a ticket on the phone), from first actions
(recognition of a problem) to last actions (e.g., subscription renewal).

Touchpoints – what customers do while interacting and how they do it.

Channels – where they perform actions (e.g., Facebook).

Thoughts and feelings -what the customer thinks and feels at each touchpoint.

The goal of a customer journey map is to gain an understanding of how the customer
experience develops over time and show that in a deliverable which everyone in the
organization can appreciate. It allows you to discover possible problems and improve
the design so it’s more likely to exceed customers’ expectations at all touchpoints.
To create a customer journey map, you can follow these steps:

Define your Map’s Business Goal – Clarify who will use your map and what user
experience it will address.

Conduct Research – Use customer research to determine customer experiences at

all touchpoints. Get analytical/statistical data and anecdotal evidence through, e.g.,
customer interviews, surveys, social media listening and competitive intelligence.

Review Touchpoints and Channels – List customer touchpoints (e.g., pay a bill)
and channels (e.g., online). Look for additional touchpoints or channels to include.

Make an empathy map – Pinpoint what the customer does, thinks, feels, says,
hears, etc. in a given situation. Then, determine his/her needs and how
he/she feels throughout the experience. Focus on barriers and sources of
annoyance.

Sketch the Journey – Piece together everything (touchpoints, timescale, empathy

map output, new ideas, etc.) however you like(e.g., a map). You want to show a
customer’s course of motion through touchpoints and channels across the timescale,
including his/her feelings at every touchpoint.

Iterate and Refine – Revise and transform your sketch into the best-looking version
of the ideal customer journey.

Share with Stakeholders – Ensure all stakeholders have your map, understand it
and appreciate how its use will bring beneficial changes to customers and across the
organization.

Once the map is ready, you should measure the enhanced journey’s results. For
instance, check key performance indicators (KPIs). The more touchpoints there are,
the more complex the map will be. In any case, your entire organization should soon
notice its value as a revisable, “living” document because members from all sections
will have a common reference point for a wider, sharper customer focus.

Whichever approach/es you take, beware of formulating solutions at this stage. Aim
to realistically envision possible scenarios where users experience problems.
Empathize is not just a key part of design thinking.
It’s also pivotal to user-centered design and user experience (UX) design. When
your design team remains aware of your users’ realities and passionate about
helping real people solve real problems, you’ll reap precious insights which you can
ultimately translate into products your users will love.

User Centred Design

What is User Centred Design?

User-Centred Design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus

on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. In UCD, design
teams involve users throughout the design process via a variety of research and
design techniques, to create highly usable and accessible products for them.

UCD is an Iterative Process

In user-centered design, designers use a mixture of investigative methods and tools

(e.g., surveys and interviews) and generative ones (e.g., brainstorming) to develop
an understanding of user needs. The term was coined in the 1970s. Later, cognitive
science and usability engineering expert Don Norman adopted the term in his
extensive work on improving what people experience in their use of items. And the
term rose in prominence thanks to works such as User Centered System Design:
New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (which Norman co-authored with
Stephen W. Draper) and Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (originally
titled The Psychology of Everyday Things).

Generally, each iteration of the UCD approach involves four distinct phases. First, as
designers working in teams, we try to understand the context in which users may use
a system. Then, we identify and specify the users’ requirements. A design phase
follows, in which the design team develops solutions. The team then proceeds to
an evaluation phase. Here, you assess the outcomes of the evaluation against the
users’ context and requirements, to check how well a design is performing. More
specifically, you see how close it is to a level that matches the users’ specific context
and satisfies all of their relevant needs. From here, your team makes further
iterations of these four phases, and you continue until the evaluation results are
satisfactory.

User-centered design is an iterative process that focuses on an understanding of the

users and their context in all stages of design and development.

UCD Considers the Whole User Experience

In UCD, you base your projects upon an explicit understanding of the users, tasks
and environments. The aim of the process is to capture and address the whole user
experience. Therefore, your design team should include professionals from across
multiple disciplines (e.g., ethnographers, psychologists, software and hardware
engineers), as well as domain experts, stakeholders and the users themselves.
Experts may carry out evaluations of the produced designs, using design guidelines
and criteria. However, you should bear two crucial points in mind. First, to span the
entire user experience, you must involve the users for evaluation. Second, you'll
need to ensure long-term monitoring of use.

David Benyon distinguishes four ways in which UCD pays off:

With close user involvement, products are more likely to meet users’ expectations
and requirements. This leads to increased sales and lower costs incurred by
customer services.

Systems designers tailor products for people in specific contexts and with specific
tasks, thereby reducing the chances of situations with a high risk of human error
arising. UCD leads to safer products.
Putting designers in close contact with users means a deeper sense of empathy
emerges. This is essential in creating ethical designs that respect privacy and the
quality of life.

By focusing on all users of a product, designers can recognize the diversity of

cultures and human values through UCD – a step in the right direction towards
creating sustainable businesses.

CUT!

Learn More about Empathize

Take our Design Thinking course to learn how to empathize to guide successful
designs: https://www.interaction-design.org/courses/design-thinking-the-beginner-s-
guide

Follow this designer’s story about how to empathize

successfully: https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/empathy-and-ux-design/

Find invaluable tips on how to empathize here: https://uxplanet.org/empathy-in-ux-

design-what-it-is-and-why-its-important-3f6a8919ef10

For a deeper view of how to empathize from a more psychology-based UX angle,

read this: https://uxmag.com/articles/what-is-empathy

References & Where to Learn More

Needs Before Wants in User Experiences – Maslow and the Hierarchy of

Needs https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/needs-before-wants-in-
user-experiences-maslow-and-the-hierarchy-of-needs

Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, 1943

Stephen Bradley’s original piece for Smashing Magazine may be found

here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/designing-...

You can read Maslow’s original paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” online
here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.ht...

d.school, Bootcamp Bootleg, 2010:

http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/
BootcampBootleg2010v2SLIM.pdf

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design

Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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Learn more about Empathize

Take a deep dive into Empathize with our course Design Thinking: The Beginner’s
Guide .