Customer Experience Design

MKTG1373
Welcome to Module 2: Discovery
Immersion

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What you will learn this module

By the end of this module you’ll be able to:

• Define the objective of the immersion stage in CX design

• Apply design thinking principles of empathy in the immersion
stage of CX design
• Plan your immersion
• Apply immersive techniques
• Conduct secondary and primary research.

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2.1.0 Immersion / Empathy

The first stage of CX Design, which we call immersion or empathy is all about
understanding the customer and putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. For this
to happen you will need to engage in secondary and primary research.

Before you engage in any research it is important you have a research plan (or research
design). This activity will help you to complete section 1 of Assessment 1 where you
must show how you plan and design your research. It will also orient you towards the
first stage of the CX design thinking process, which is the immerse/empathise stage.

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2.1.0 Immersion / Empathy

Empathy is the foundation of human-centred design and grounds the first stage of
the CX design process, ‘Immerse’. In this stage, you are going to activate a design
thinking mindset to:

• Observe: View customers and their behaviour in the context of their lives
• Engage: Interact with and interview customers through both scheduled and
short ‘intercept’ encounters
• Empathise: Keep a customer-centric point of view throughout your research
• Immerse: Experience what your customer experiences
.

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2.1.1 Defining research design

What happens in this stage of the CX design process?

We are in the first stage of CX design; "Discover/Immerse". The goal here is

to use the design thinking principle of empathy to walk in our customers'
shoes and understand their experiences.
Press the green plus (+) icon in the graphic to find out what we do in this
stage of the design process.

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2.1.1 Defining research design
What is research design?

Research design is the methods (and processes) you choose to employ to

solve a design problem. Your task is to determine the best research design
to ensure you get the customer and market insights you need to solve
customer experience problems.

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2.1.1 Defining research design

Step 1: Read the short section 5.1.2 ‘Research planning’ on page 101 of
Stickdorn, M, Hormess, ME, Lawrence, A, & Schneider, J 2018, This Is Service
Design Doing : Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World, O'Reilly
Media, Incorporated, Sebastopol.
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/reader.action?docID=5219777
&ppg=132 (Links to an external site.)
As you read, think about how planning makes a difference to the end
outcome of a process, and how this has applied to your own study and
completion of assessments so far. Have you noticed a difference in the
outcome when you don’t plan how you will go about achieving a goal or a
task?

Step 2: Download and read the design brief

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2.1.1 Defining research design

Step 3: Open up your Miro board or the design tool of your choice. Please
refer to the Technology Toolkit for guidance on how to use Miro. In your
design space, capture your initial thoughts to the following questions in
relation to the design brief.

What is the core problem? At this stage, the problem will be broad, and we
call it a wicked problem. Examples of wicked problems are enhancing
student engagement, solving hunger in the world, and getting older adults
to use more technology.

Who are the people I need to study? You may have a clear idea of whom
you need to study. But many times, the clients know they have a problem
but they do not know who to solve it for. They may tell you “we want to be
able to offer a better customer experience”, without stating who will benefit
from it. It is your job to help the client focus on a specific target or segment.
However, in order to do that, you may need to do some research first.

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2.1.1 Defining research design

What are the company's goals? Are they asking you to visit get more people
to buy their products and services (conversion problem)? Are they asking
you to create awareness of their brand in order to get people to act on that
awareness (brand activation problem)? Are they asking you to increase
engagement of your customers with the brand’s activities (engagement
problem)?. Lastly, what does engagement looks like for them ? (e.g. for one
organisation more engagement means clients coming more regularly to
their events, for other organisation it may mean more website visitors)
It is important to study the design brief carefully and ask these questions to
frame your research.
This is a part of your research planning for Assessment 1.

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2.1.2 Why is research design important?

Research design takes time, resources, and preparation but the results are
worth it. Read through the benefits of research design below.

It allows you to design based on facts and not assumptions

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "I already know who my customers
are, so I don't need to do any more work." It's true that we all have a
working knowledge of who our users are, but understanding their pain
points, what they're looking for in a product, and how they would use your
product are not things you can learn from a one-off email interaction.

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 2.1.2 Why is research design important?
• It allows you to design based on facts and not assumptions It's easy to fall into the
trap of thinking, "I already know who my customers are, so I don't need to do any more
work." It's true that we all have a working knowledge of who our users are, but
understanding their pain points, what they're looking for in a product, and how they
would use your product are not things you can learn from a one-off email interaction.

• It helps with focus and prioritisation When you're juggling feature requests,
stakeholder feedback, and a short project schedule, customer data can help you
focus on what is most important. After all, if something came up during the
research phase that wasn't addressed before launch you can bet that issue won't
go away on its own.

• It fosters more empathy for your customer Getting facetime with your customers
reminds everyone that they are actual people with thoughts and feelings, not just
a number on a growth projection. Building deeper connections with your
customers helps you in your day-to-day work and decisions.

• It results in happier customers. By observing your design in the wild with actual
customers, you can create a user experience that will delight and not frustrate.
You can fix simple things like confusing navigation or an unclear path to purchase
that would otherwise have resulted in support calls or frustrated customer emails.

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2.1.3 Research planning for immersion

Guidelines for planning your research

Capture your current thoughts and knowledge

One of the first things you will need to do is to figure out what your problem actually
is, who the people you need to study are, for what purposes, what sort of task are
you engaging in (brand activation, engagement, conversion)? What does this look
like? It is at this moment that your assumptions will start becoming clear to you.

Review what you know

It’s important for you document what you already know, so you can build upon it and
then focus on planning for what you don’t know yet. This is a good time to write
down some of your assumptions about the topic. For example: suppose the brief asks
you to help create more engagement with older people and technology. So, you
believe that most older adults have issues with technology, because this has been
your previous experience. That is an assumption of yours; you will need to conduct
research to check on whether it is true or not).

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2.1.3 Research planning for immersion

Plan your secondary research

This will help you better understand what you do not know and where you
should search for information. This is when you decide where you are doing to
get the information you need to solve the questions above. It is advisable to
start with secondary research to understand the overall context, then do
primary research to understand the current issues and, depending on the
results, do a bit more of secondary research to better contextualise the issues
you found in primary research.

Conduct secondary research

This will be discussed in the next activity, but some of the key questions to be
answered here are:
• Who are you studying?
• What is the context (physical, social, political)?
• What is the market like (competitors)? Who are the stakeholders?
• What are some of the (hidden) assumptions of these studies?

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2.1.3 Research planning for immersion

Figure out what you know and what you don't know
Organise your key insights. If you are doing this in a group it is a good chance
to get the group together and share insights. What do you still need to
know? Primary data will help you answer this.

Examine your constraints, obstacles and workarounds

What sort of constraints and obstacles will you face? How should you work
around them? E.g. you have realised that you will need to talk to older
adults in order to understand their difficulties with technology. However,
under COVID-19 some of them cannot be reached face-to-face. You can
think of a work around (doing interviews remotely – e.g. via Zoom).
However, what happens if their skills in technology do not allow them to
participate in the interview? Will you do it by phone?

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2.1.3 Research planning for immersion

Conduct your primary research

Common goals are:
What are their actual behaviours, drivers, contexts?
How do customers/users differ?
How does this behaviour develop over time? What are customers trying to
do at different stages?
What is the customer thinking, sensing, feeling?

Capture your processes and insights

Remember to document how you conducted research to arrive at your
insights. This is very important in CX Design because most of what we do
stays under the water like a large iceberg. What the client sees is only the tip
of the iceberg and it may be difficult for them to understand the amount of
work you have put into making that a good solution.

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2.1.3 Research planning for immersion

Instructions

Start planning your research

Now that you’ve read about what’s involved in research planning, continue
to plan your research for the assessments in this course.
Step 1: In Task 2.1.1 you started documenting your initial thoughts on the
design brief. In your Miro board or a design tool of your choice, continue
your research planning using these questions as a guide:
Capture your current thoughts and knowledge
Review what you know; What are your assumptions about the topic?
Establish what you don’t know and what you would like to know

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2.2.0 Secondary data collection

The activity will help you engage with the immersion stage of your design
thinking. It will explain how to engage in secondary research collection,
which is key for understanding the behaviour of the overall segment and
help you frame questions for your primary research. You don’t want to
reinvent the wheel. Secondary research asks you to take a look at what is
out there and bring insights into the CX design problem you are trying to
solve.

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2.2.1 What is secondary data collection?

Examples of secondary data include

• Books
• Published sources
• Journal articles
• Newspapers
• Websites
• Blogs
• Publicly available reports

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2.2.1 What is secondary data collection?
Find some secondary data

Consider this scenario

You have been tasked to re-design the experiences for a clothing store. The
market demands that you make the store more accessible for people with
disabilities. Before you propose adjustments, you will need to understand
the needs of people with disabilities. What is the size of the market? What
sorts of disability would you need to attend to? What is the profile of those
with disability? What are their most relevant needs? What can you say in
terms of demographics, psychographics and behavioural aspects of this
segment in Melbourne?
• Step 1: Spend 15 minutes finding some secondary data on the design
problem above.
• Step 2: Share it in the padlet
• Step 3: Review your peers’ contributions. Use this as a collective
resource to see examples of secondary data.

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2.2.2 Why do we conduct secondary research?
The benefits of secondary research in design
You may encounter what is known as “wicked problems” in customer experience. For
example, your wicked problem could be how can we improve the lives of our
customers? How can we make their experiences better? How can we get more
people to engage with our brands through amazing experiences?
In order to start using design thinking to solve your wicked problem and to engage in
secondary research, follow these steps
1. Once you know your design challenge, it’s time to start learning about its broader
context. You can gain insights very quickly by exploring the most recent news in
the field.
2. Try to find trends and innovations in your particular area. They could be
technological, behavioural, or cultural. Understanding the edge of what’s possible
will help you ask great questions. Engage in a PESTLE analysis of your sector.
3. Take a look at other solutions in your area. Which ones worked? Which ones
didn’t? Are there any that feel similar to what you might design? Any solutions
that have inspired you to make one of your own?

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2.2.3 What is your context?
What questions do you need to ask?

• What do you know about the context in which your case is situated?
• Does it change from region to region?
• Is it fast growing in your region?
• What are some of the trends?
• Who are the main competitors of your organisation?
• How does the competitor differ from your client in terms of the
experiences they offer vs the experiences your client offers?

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2.2.3 What is your context?
Watch the video

PESTEL Analysis EXPLAINED | B2U | Business To You (9:48)

Watch this video to learn about the PESTLE analysis framework.

Populate your PESTLE

Populate PESTLE factors, and rate the opportunities and threats for your first
in relation to the company you are working on in Assessment 1.

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2.2.4 Who is your customer ?
What questions should we be asking when doing secondary research?
Who are you looking at?
Segment? Size? Significance?
What do you already know about them?
Demographics (e.g., age, race, gender, family size, income, or
education)
Psychographics (e.g. traits, attitudes, interests, values, and other
lifestyle factors)
Behavioural (e.g. practices, actions, usage)
What is important to them?
What are some of their values and attitudes?
What do we know about their environment?
What do we know about the behaviour we are trying to capture and
the
What is the context of that behaviour?
How does this behaviour fit in with their lives?
What are some of the past initiatives to address these issues? Were
they successful?

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2.2.4 Who is your customer ?
Build a market profile

Step 1: Using the same design problem in Task 2.2.1, develop a market
profile for customers of this firm. If there are multiple possible segments,
choose the one you see as most relevant. Use the market profile tool.

Step 2: Find answers to the questions above. If you are not able to find
answers, get data that is close enough to your data that may help you make
some inferences about market profile.
For example, you may not find information on behaviour of Melbournians
coffee drinking patterns, but you may find information on Sydneysiders. This
will be better than no information. Find some secondary data on the design
problem you’ve been given.

Step 3: Press 'Save & export when you have finished filling in the Market
profile table.

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2.3.0 Primary data collection

Now that you have had a good grasp of the context of your organisation in
terms of trends, competitors, and market profile, it is time to dive more
deeply into customers’ lives so you can understand every moment of their
experience with your organisation. This will assist to better understand how
to help them get to where they want to be. You will start by understanding
what primary data collection is by understanding some of the data
collection methods that are commonly used by CX Designers.

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2.3.1 What is primary data collection?

Primary research is any research that you conduct directly with your target
customers. It's greatest advantages are that you can target it to groups or
segments of your customers and specifically tailor the content to your
research needs. Scroll through the presentation below to learn more about
primary research methods in CX design.

Instructions
Step 1: Review your design brief again and brainstorm at least 2 types of
primary data would you ideally collect from your customer.
Step 2: Document your primary research goals in Miro or the design tool
you have chosen to work in.
Instructions
Step 1: Review your design brief again and brainstorm at least 2 types of
primary data would you ideally collect from your customer.
Step 2: Document your primary research goals in Miro or the design tool
you have chosen to work in.

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2.3.2 Triangulation
The goal of triangulation is to gain in-depth insights about the experience
you are engaging in. For triangulation, you need to use multiple data
collection methods to compare and contrast data sources. When
triangulating you are always asking, what is similar? What is different? Why?
Below, you can see triangulation with 3 techniques. You could triangulate
with other techniques too.

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2.3.2 Triangulation

Why use triangulation?

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2.3.2 Triangulation

Why use triangulation?

Why would you engage in observations, participants’ comments and

questionnaire responses? It is possible that your participants tell you that
they have no problem using a microwave. However, an observation done at
people’s home when using microwaves may tell you a different story. They
may have challenges or be too slow to operate the microwave. So, why are
they not telling you? Are they embarrassed? Do they not perceive these
challenges as a problem to be addressed?

We could create a hypothesis around people hiding their difficulties from

colleagues out of the fear of being seen as incompetent. Triangulation helps
you raise questions that you did not know were previously there. Similarly,
questionnaires may help you quantify issues, for example, to know how
many people perceive challenges with using a microwave and how many do
not.

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2.3.2 Triangulation

Instructions
Can you think of a situation when what people say they do is different from
what they actually do? What are some of questions that these differences
raise? Can you create some hypothesis about this behaviour?
Step 1: Briefly interview someone (a family member is suggested) you know
about a specific meal. i.e. "What did you have for breakfast today? How was
it?"
Step 2: Then create a video or get them to create a video of themselves
having that meal.
Step 3: What sort of differences have you found between what they said
and what you observed? What was similar and what was different?
Step 4: Share your experiences and insights from this exercise with your
peers in the discussion board below. Keep your post to 150-200 words.
Step 5: Read through at least 2 of your peers' responses to build your
knowledge of using various research methods to validate a hypothesis.

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2.3.3 Collect data through observations

Methods of capturing observations

Fieldnotes, which means you take notes as soon as you have a chance to be
alone. You may for example describe a day in your life or something
interesting that happened at the supermarket.
Another common way is to take photographs. They will help your analysis
and help you remember what you saw.
Finally, you can video what you see and this will enable other to see the
same things you are seeing.

Watch the video

MAPPING PEOPLE: An Ethnographic Case Study of Ikea Shoppers
To understand ethnography better, we ask you to watch this short movie
about the what researchers learned by observing people’s movement at
IKEA.

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2.3.3 Collect data through observations

As you can see many of these insights could not have been learnt if they
were interviewing people. We are simply not aware of 90% of our
behaviour.

Conduct field observation

Step 1: Go to your local supermarket and to the chocolate and sweets aisle.
Observe who is buying the products there for about 5 minutes. What do
they have in common? Do they all act the same? If not, what are some
noticeable differences? Do they spend the same time shopping? Do they
seem to know what they want? Do they pick what they want and leave or
do they browse the shelves?
Step 2: Take notes. These notes are also called ‘field notes’ and they are an
important tool for registering data and insights.
Step 3: Share your fieldnotes with your peers in the padlet.
Step 4: Comment on one of your classmates' field notes with any patterns
you detected based on their observations.

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2.3.4 Netnography

Step 1: Watch the two videos below to learn more about what netnography
is.

Watch the videos (2)

Netnography: Robert Kozinets (3:16)
Take a look at this 3min video by Robert Kozinets, the founder of
Netnography, explaining what it is and why it is so important.

While netnography is mostly used to understand communities and social

group on the internet, there are also more simplistic ways of conducting
digital ethnographies that involve observing online content and interactions.
For example, it can involve observing the comments someone posts about
your brand or organisation on social media, or examining their online
review, can reveal many issues customer are facing and this will help you
gain much deeper insights into current pain points.

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2.3.4 Netnography
Step 2: Go to Booking.com (Links to an external site.), pick a hotel with 100+
user reviews and examine their content. Construct a netnography analysis
between 100-150 words where you address the following questions:
What are the major issues (pain points)?
What are the best features (gain points)?
Can you order them by importance (the intensity of the complaint or praise)
and frequency (how often they are mentioned)?
If you focus on the top three pain points and top three gain points, when do
they happen in the customer journey (before, on the first interaction, during
their stay, at the end, or after their hotel experience)?
What are some of the emotional words customers use the describe these
pain and gain points? What can you infer about customer needs in these
moments?

Step 3: Share your analysis with your peers in the padlet.

Step 4: Read through at least 2 of your peers' contributions to build your
understanding of the insights you can achieve through netnography.

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2.4.0 Interviewing
In order to learn how to design amazing experiences, you first need to get
familiar with the design thinking process. In this activity you will learn and
experience the different stages of design thinking. You will have a chance to
explore the role of each stage and will have a to experience it first hand
through interactive activities. By completing this activity, you will develop a
holistic understanding of the process of CX Design.

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2.4.0 Interviewing
Interviewing is the central technique in CX Design. You want to know what
they think and how they perceive their world. You want to know their
customer journey from their point of view. Thus, it is essential to include
interviews in your methodology.

The number and quality of interviewees vary depending on the resources

you have. A larger project may require more interviewees, but it also
requires more time investment from your side. As a rule of thumb, a
minimum of 10 interviewees is required for you to get some worthwhile
insights and some variance within your data. Interviews can last from 30
minutes to 120, depending on your topic and resources.

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2.4.0 Interviewing
Secondary research (and your resource constraints) will help you determine who you
should interview. After conducting your secondary research, you should have a good
idea of the key profiles you want to investigate. There are a few people who it may
be worth investigating.
1. Mainstream customers – Typical of a segment or sub-segment (typical problems
and issues). They will match the description of an average profile in your segment
of interest.
2. Extremes – They are useful when you want to understand a specific behaviour
(help to isolate situations). They will be extreme in a dimension of behaviour you
are interested in.
3. Experts – they are experienced or knowledgeable (history, technical, context,
introduce you to others). Experts can be customers or staff who directly deals
with customers. They can also help you locate mainstream and extreme
customers. Experts are useful for triangulation with interviews of other types.
4. Analogous – those who have lived similar experiences in other contexts/
situations (these are used in situations where 1,2 and 3 might be compromised -
for example, you need to interview owners of macaws, but you could not find
any. Instead, you owners of cockatoos and parrots and their behaviour should be
similar enough to allow you to draw insights from their interviews).
5.
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2.4.2 Finding and approaching interviewees
How do you find interviewees?

When working in funded projects, it is common for firms to recruit

interviewees from market research companies who already have panels of
customers or pools they can recruit from. This is usually costly and involves
providing some kind of monetary incentive for interviewees to participate.
However, with small project and educational projects, it is common to
recruit via snow ball sampling. This is when you will start with someone you
know and then ask this person to point to others in the network that may fit
the profile. Snowball sampling may be hard for the first three interviewees
but it becomes easier as you go. To make the most out of your
interviews, you should:

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2.4.2 Finding and approaching interviewees
Sufficiently prepare before each one. It is important to build an interview
guide. Make a list of questions that you want to ask your users. Then, group
the questions into themes or topics, and try to create a smoot flow between
the topics so that your interview will flow naturally.

Decide on the logistics. Where do you want to meet them? Will you meet
virtually or face to face? How much time will you spend with them? Is there
an activity you can do together to enrich conversation? What will you ask
them to show you?

Ask for permission (Ethics). It is an ethical practice to explain what the

interview is for and to let the interviewee know that they can pull out of the
interview at any time. In addition, reassure the interviewee that their data
will be anonymised. You can use a pseudonym instead. Make sure you
record the interview for future access and that you have asked permission
to record it.

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2.4.2 Finding and approaching interviewees
Instructions

Step 1: Watch this video with tips on how to build an interview guide:

Watch the video

Semi-structured interviews guide I semi-structured interview protocol

Step 2: In your design space, construct your own interview guide with
questions that want to ask your interviewees.

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2.4.3 What do you ask?
Organise your questions

A good rule of thumb is to open with some general questions, then go deep.
This will give your interviewee time to get comfortable with you.

Phrase your questions strategically

Frame questions in an open-ended way. This helps you to further explore
your challenge and elaborate on interesting themes you discover during the
conversations. Try this:
“Tell me about an experience …”
“What are the best/worst parts about …?”
“Can you help me understand about …?”
“Can you tell me an example of when … happened? What did you do in this
situation?

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2.4.3 What do you ask?
Encourage people to tell you their whole story and avoid questions that lead
to just a yes/no answer. During the interview, you’ll need to ask the question
“Why?” “How” and What?” on a constant basis — even though you might
think you already know the answer.

Chances are, your users are going to have their own answers that challenge
your assumptions about them. Keep in mind that people tend to have gaps
in what they say they do and what they actually do; it happens to all of us,
and observing where these gaps form can help you gain insights about
users.

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2.4.3 What do you ask?
Maximise your interviewees' responses
You could ask interviewees to bring objects into the interview or use creative
methods to spark more in depth answers, including:
Using probes
Writing and drawing about events or objects
Taking a photograph
Mapping their daily routines or a day in their lives

Document your interview

When engaging in interviews it is good practice to record interviews and to transcribe
them later. In addition, as soon as the interview is over, take 15-30 minutes to make
observations about this interview. What did you like about it? What were the key
insights? Describe the context (room, clothes, atmosphere, mood) in which the
interview happened and anything that might help you remember what happened and
how it happened.

Work on your interview guide

Go back to your design space and work on improving your interview guide, with the
above information in mind.

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2.4.4 Other forms of primary research
There are several techniques that can be used when engaging in primary
data collection. Watch the two short videos on some common techniques
for collecting primary data: cultural probes and generative sessions.

Watch the videos

Cultural Probes - Design Thinking Book (1:07)

Generative Session - Design Thinking Book (1:22)

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2.4.4 Other forms of primary research
Instructions

Step 1: Find some interesting techniques in reputable sites. Check the some
of the techniques created by IDEO, one of the founding companies in design
thinking. https://www.designkit.org/methods#filter (Links to an external
site.)
Take your time to explore the different possibilities that are out there.
Step 2: From your research, choose a technique that has not been discussed
yet and share it in the Padlet. Answer these questions:
Define the technique
Explain what it is good for
Provide an example of a situation in which you believe the technique should
be used.
Which other techniques you have already learned (observations,
netnography, interviewing) would you combine with this one with.
Step 3: Review your peers’ contributions and use this as a collective
resource.

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2.5.0 Empathy mapping
In this activity you will learn how to do empathy maps. Empathy maps are
commonly used tool by CX designers and they help you capture the data in a
manner that helps to see your customers as a human being with needs,
wants and senses. Empathy mapping can be used with any of the data
collection techniques you have already learned. By engaging with empathy
maps you will able to get to insights that are more meaningful to the
customer you are designing for.

What is empathy?
As you discovered in Week 1, CX and Design Thinking are interconnected in
their processes, mindsets and principles. As you will apply design thinking to
solve CX problems in your assessments, it is important for you to explore
why design thinking guides how we plan and conduct our research in the
empathy/immerse stage. In this task you will learn what empathy is and why
it is so important for CX design.

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2.5.0 Empathy mapping
Watch the video
Brené Brown on Empathy (2:53)

Discuss
Step 1: Answer the questions in the discussion forum. Keep your response
short, no more than 100 words.
What is your own definition of empathy? What are the qualities of
empathy?
Describe a practical example of the difference between empathy and
sympathy.
In everyday life, what might get in the way of empathy?
Step 2: Read over your peers’ contribution, comment on one that resonates
with you and explain why.

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2.5.3 How do you build an empathy map?
Instructions
Step 1: Watch this 2 minute video. It features customer review of a tablet
for older people. As you watch it, write post-it notes describing what they
are doing, what they are seeing, touching, hearing, saying, thinking and
feeling. Also note what they are trying to do. Write one thing per post-it
note. Write as many post-it notes as needed to capture all that is going on in
the video.

Watch the video

GrandPad is the iPad for the elderly

Step 2: Once you finished ‘downloading’ all the information into post-it
notes, draw an empathy map that looks like the one below and start moving
the post-it notes into the differences spaces on your canvas.

Use the empathy map template to record your observations. You can export
your observations as a Word file and save it on to your computer.

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2.5.3 How do you build an empathy map?
Step 3: Once you have created your report prototype from the empathy
map template above. post it for your classmates to see in the padlet.

Step 4: Compare and contrast your empathy map with that made by others.
Have you missed anything? Is it possible that your colleague has placed the
same information on a different area of the map? If you found differences,
make sure to make a comment on your classmates' work noting the
difference. See if you can both reach a consensus of where to place the
information.

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2.6.0 Organising your data

The purpose of this activity is to teach you how to organise your data. If you
did well in your primary and secondary research you will have a lot of data
to deal with. It is important that you find ways to organise the data so you
can make sense of it. This will help you extract insights from your data set
and will allow you to move into the next stage of design thinking.

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2.6.1 The “good” problem of too much data
Downloading
Referred to as the 'Get it out' phase. Downloading is getting all of the
research findings out of our heads, and sharing with others in the group –
making them tangible and explicit. This forms the beginning of the research
wall. During the ‘Downloading’ phase, it is important not to rush. Allow
some time for storytelling, but ensure the pace of moving forward stays
consistent. Choose a scribe to document findings on Post-it® notes. You may
wish to rotate this job.

Clustering
Clustering is about grouping findings into themes. The group should look for
commonality in the type of finding and group it with similar others. This can
be done roughly as the group downloads their data, and/or afterwards. This
is likely to take multiple iterations to get right.

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2.6.1 The “good” problem of too much data
Meaning and pattern finding
Referred to as the 'Organise chaos' phase. Once the clusters have taken
shape, this is about evaluating the meaning of each cluster, and looking at
which clusters relate to others (and how). Through doing so, it may involve
slightly rearranging clusters again for optimal understanding. Additionally,
this phase also pertains to looking at the research data from a perspective of
each participant – to see where individuals’ mindsets and journeys
meaningfully differ.

Insight seeking
Referred to as the 'Interpret thoroughly' phase. This is where designers seek
to distil key insights. In doing so a number of tools may be used (journey
maps, stakeholder maps, persona archetypes etc.) and rich discussions had
around the meaning of the patterns that emerge. Whatever patterns and
findings are most insightful and relate most closely to the brief will emerge
as dominant.

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2.6.2 Insight cards

Watch the video

Insight Cards - Design Thinking Book (1:13)

Decide on your key insights

As you progress with your assignment, take a good look at the secondary
and primary data you have collected. What are some of the key insights you
were able to derive from this data. Use the "insight cards" method to see
where you are at with your research.
Step 1: Go to your design space. Write 5-10 insights you were able to derive
from your secondary data collection. Remember to register the source(s) of
your insight.
Step 2: Write 5-10 insights you were able to derive from your primary data
collection. Remember to register the source(s) of your insight.

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2.6.3 Organise your data through affinity diagrams
The affinity diagram organises a large quantity of information by following
natural relationships. This method using both analytical thinking and
intuition. It was invented in the 1960's by Japanese anthropologist Jiro
Kawakita so it is sometimes referred as the KJ Method.

Watch the video

Affinity Diagram - Design Thinking Book (1:04)
Watch this short video which explains what Affinity Diagrams are.

Affinity diagrams are used to

1. Understand what is most important from ambiguous data
2. Tame complexity
3. Identify connections in data
4. Create hierarchies
5. Identifying themes
6. Identify what factors to focus on that will support the most successful
design possible from a customer’s perspective.

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2.6.4 Point of view (preparing for CX Definition)

At this stage you may have many insights and themes emerging from your
research. It is your goal to condense all that into a single point of view that
captures the most important theme or challenge you have identified
through your research. This point is your problem statement.

The problem statement often takes the form of a Point of View. A Point Of
View (POV) is a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which will
allow you to ideate in a goal-oriented manner. Your Point of View (POV)
defines the right challenge to address with the next stages of your CX
Design. A good POV will allow you to solve your design challenge in a goal-
oriented manner in which you keep a focus on your customer, their needs
and your insights about them.
You articulate a POV by combining three elements – customer, need, and
insight. You can articulate your POV by inserting your information about
your customer, the needs and your insights in the following sentence:

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2.6.4 Point of view

An average male commuter using the 375 bus line needs to have access to night
buses because he tends to work in the many hospitals in the area and they work in
alternating shifts, which makes it important to have 24/7 access to transportation.

Construct your first POV

• Your POV should not be too broad or too specific. In other words, it should never
contain any specific solution, nor should it contain any indication as to how to
fulfil your customer’ needs in the experience you’re designing. Instead, your POV
should provide a wide enough scope for you and your team to start thinking
about solutions which go beyond status quo. However, you should construct a
fairly narrowly-focussed POV so you can ideate for it.
• In your design space, write your POV regarding the design brief.
• In addition to your problem statement, it is important to create “How might we
…” questions associated with your problem statement.
• For example, in relation to the example problem statement above, you may ask
“How might we provide better alternative night transportation for doctors and
nurses who usually use the 375 bus line to commute?”
Note: You will iterate your problem statement and Point of View again next module
as your insights may change as you conduct more research.

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—
Next…
CX Definition

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