DESIGN THINKING

EMPATHIZE

GEMA 2020-2021
Robin TIVY

robin.tivy.int@groupe-gema.com
Jaques Secretin
• https://tennis2table.com/actualite/rip/deces-jacques-secretin.html
Blind portraits
In groups of 2

• Create a google meet for the two of you

• Get a pen and a sheet of paper
• Take 2 minutes to Say hello! How is your day going?
• In one minute - Looking only at your partner and not at your drawing, do a
portrait of your partner.
• Because you are not looking at the paper, you can both draw at the same time.

• Be back in the class in 5 minutes.

• Go!
• Being uncomfortable

• Making messes

• Starting now
Last week…
• Definined design thinking
• Design thinking process
• Three phases of human centered design
• Mindsets
So many answers to the same question, but which is the right one for you
Human-centered design consists of three phases:
Human-centered design consists of three phases:
 EMPATHY
• Empathy as the heart of design
• Empathy is a journey into the feelings of others.
Sometimes it’s a physical journey, or, it’s a virtual
journey, where users share their screens with you or
collect pictures of their environment in a camera study.
• Whatever your methods include, a good empathy study
will give you new perspectives on the lives of your users
—including the challenges they face, the things that
keep them up at night, and the moments that delight
them. Having this empathy can give you the insights you
need to solve hard, worthwhile problems.
CUP Design
• How did it make you feel to
share your experience?
• How did you determine the
proposed solution for your
partner?
• Pain points.
Brene Brown - Empathy
• https://brenebrown.com/videos/rsa-short-empathy/
Find the optimal level of empathic
engagement.
•  There are 3 levels of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and
compassionate
• a. Cognitive empathy is when you put yourself
into someone else’s place, and see their
perspective.
• It is very possible that you do this without
feeling any sympathy/pity.
 • b. Affective / emotional empathy is when
you feel the other person’s emotions
alongside them.
• Careful not to be overwhelmed by those
emotions.
• You might have a empathy overload where
you are unable to respond and might
destroy the users’ trust and even put
yourself in distress.

“There’s probably a quadratic nature of empathy.

More is not always better, at a certain point it tips and goes down again.”
— Erika Weisz – Doctoral Candidate, Psychology
• c. The last is compassionate empathy.
• It is what usually understood by people
as empathy.
• We need to first understand and then
sympathise with what they are going
through.
• Finally we take, or help them to take,
action to resolve the problem.
• When you’re building a product to help people, compassionate
empathy is the type of empathy that you should aim for.
• People who want or need empathy don’t just need you us understand
(cognitive empathy), and they certainly don’t need us just to feel their
pain or, worse, to burst into tears alongside them (emotional
empathy). Although they might be emotionally fulfilling, we aren’t
solving their problem this way.

However, finding balance is important. Switch between

compassionate empathy and cognitive empathy.
Empathy in Design Thinking

Empathy is about defining the problem you’re

solving, and prioritizing which solutions to build.

It is design’s job to be an advocate for the people

who use a product or service, but it is also their
job to make sure all employees understand the
stories and issues from these users.
 Be empathetic not only to the users, but also the rest
of the team.
•  Emotions of others are contagious. When you
talk to one side, also talk to the other side so you
know the perspective of both sides.

Yes, our main concern is our users. But

sometimes, take a step back and also
communicate with the rest of the team. Clarify
things, especially on why your product is in its
current stage.

Know that you could make the best product, only

because you know the story from both sides.
• Take a rest, distract your mind. 
Empathy sells.
Google Dads
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhPklt9nYas
Procter and Gamble Moms
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcUjWYRn0XI

• These two short ads have something in common.  indirect selling.

• In the case of Procter & Gamble, the end of the commercial shows a quick sequence of product logos. With
Google, the product is part of the narrative.

• According to 2007 research by the World Advertising Research Center, emotional ads outsell informational ones
by 19%.
• The only problem is that you, as a business owner, don’t have the time or ability to experience your customers’
thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. So, you must learn how to experience these qualities another way, through
research.
• Rather than beginning with shiny new technology, we start by trying to
establish deep, personal empathy with our users to determine their
needs and wants.
• We must fill in two blanks: Our users need a better way to ___ BECAUSE
___. The because portion is a big deal.

• Burn this into your memory: “Our users need a better way to ____
BECAUSE ____.”

• https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e055c7c59820472e9cf44457e7c15c
c7
A Day in the Life Graph+
• Take a sheet of paper (use the Sports!
other side of your blind portrait
drawing)

Time of day

Feeling
Draw line down the left side
(feelings), and one through the
middle (time of day). Phone call

Draw a line that maps your feelings

Wake up! Pain point
throughout yesterday, be sure to use
drawings or text to explain.
_
 Four Types of Mapping

1. Empathy mapping
2. Experience mapping
3. Customer journey mapping
4. Service blueprinting
Empathy map
An collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a
particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to:

1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and

2) aid in decision making.

Empathy Map
• An empathy map is a tool used when
collecting data about customers to better
understand your target customer base.

• Empathy maps visualize customer needs,

condense customer data into a brief
chart, and help you consider what
customers want -- not what you think
they want.
Characteristics:
• The map is split into 4 quadrants: Says, Thinks, Feels, Does.
• It shows user’s perspective regarding the tasks related to the product.
• It is not chronological or sequential.
• There is one empathy map for each persona or user type (1:1 mapping).
Why use it:
• To build empathy for your users
• To force alignment and understanding about a user type
When to use it:
• Beginning of any design process
• When categorizing research notes from a user interview
Instructions
Step 1: On a whiteboard or a large flipchart, draw a 4-quadrant map. Label the sections with “say,” “do,”
“think,” and “feel,” respectively.
Step 2: Populate the left-hand quadrants with Post-its that capture each of your individual observations
—using one Post-it per idea. Place observations of what people do in the lower-left quadrant, and place
observations of what people say in the upper-left quadrant. Try color-coding positive things with green
Post-its, yellow Post-its for neutral, and pink/red for frustrations, confusion, or pain points. The key is
not to record everything, but instead to capture what stands out.
Step 3: When you run out of observations (or room) on the left side, begin to fill the right side with
Post-its, inferring what people think in the upper-right quadrant and what they feel in the lower-right
quadrant. Pay attention to people’s body language, tone, and choice of words.
Step 4: Take a step back and look at the map as a whole. Try to draw some insights or conclusions from
you have just written down, shared, and talked about. These questions serve as a good prompt for a
discussion of insights. What seems new or surprising? Are there contradictions or disconnects within or
between quadrants? What unexpected patterns appear? What, if any, latent human needs emerge?
How to empathy map
• https://www.nngroup.com/videos/empathy-map/

• Empathy mapping:
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/empathy-mapping/
Empathy Map Assignment
• In your groups of 2 from the « Blind Portrait », share your Day in the Life Graph.
• Analyze your partners graph paying particular attention to high and low points.
• Interview each other – use active listening and 5 why questions to get the reason for the
highs and lows (touch points).
• What are the pain points? Try to understand motivations.
• Write down observations – tone of voice, words, thoughts, feelings, actions
• Create an EMPATHY MAP for your partner based on the graph and the interview – use post-
its, or online tools (Miro, Mural, Whiteboard… )
• Suggest design thinking challenges that you identify (How might we? – improve feeling of
community/ promote sports/ find time for self care ect)
Output:
• Empathy Map is to be submitted individually on Classroom along with suggested design
challenges.
 Experience Mapping
generalize the concept of customer-journey maps across user types and products.

• An experience map is a visualization of an entire end-to-end

experience that a “generic” person goes through in order to
accomplish a goal.
• This experience is agnostic of a specific business or product. It’s used
for understanding a general human behavior (as opposed to a
customer journey map, which is more specific and focused on related
to a specific business).
Experience Map Characteristics:
• It is not tied to a specific product or service, it is general.
• It is split into 4 lanes: phases, actions, thoughts, mindsets/emotions.
• It offers a general human perspective; it is not a specific to a particular user type or
product/service.
• It depicts events in chronological order.
Why use it:
• To understand a general human behavior
• To create a baseline understanding of an experience that is product/service agnostic
When to use it:
• Before a customer journey map in order to gain understanding for a general human
behavior
• When converging multiple experiences (tool and specific user agnostic) into one
visualization
Journey Mapping
• A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes
through in order to accomplish a goal.
• In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of
user actions into a timeline. Next, the timeline is fleshed out with user
thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. This narrative is
condensed and polished, ultimately leading to a visualization.
• Customer journey maps focus on a specific customer’s interaction
with a product or service.
journey map Characteristics:
• The map is tied to a specific product or service.
• It is split into 4 lanes: phases, actions, thoughts, mindsets/emotions.
• It reflects the user’s perspective:
• Including her mindset, thoughts, and emotions
• Leaving out most process details
• It is chronological.
• There is one map per persona/user type (1:1 mapping).
Why use it:
• To pinpoint specific customer journey touchpoints that cause pain or delight
• To break down silos to create one shared, organization-wide understanding of the customer
journey
• To assign ownership of key touchpoints in the journey to internal departments
When to use it:
• At any point in the design process, as a reference point amongst a team throughout a
product/service design cycle
4. Service Blueprinting
counterparts to customer journey maps, focused on the employees.

• visualizes the relationships between different service components —

people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are
directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.
• Think of service blueprints as a part two to customer journey maps.
• Similar to customer journey maps, blueprints are instrumental in complex
scenarios spanning many service-related offerings.
• Blueprinting is an ideal approach to experiences that are omnichannel,
involve multiple touchpoints, or require a crossfunctional effort (that is,
coordination of multiple departments).
Characteristics:
•It is tied to a specific service.
•It is split into 4 lanes: customer actions, frontstage actions, backstage actions, and support processes.
•It reflects the organization’s perspective:
•Focusing on the service provider and employees
•Leaving out most customer details
•It is chronological and hierarchical.

Why use it:

•To discover weaknesses in the organization
•To identify opportunities for optimization
•To bridge cross department efforts
•To break down silos and create one shared, organization-wide understanding of how the service is
provided

When to use it:

•After customer journey mapping
•Before making organizational or process changes
•When pinpointing a funnel or breakpoint internally
Design Thinking
Inspiration
Phase Methods
Create a project plan

1. A good place to start is with a calendar. Print out or make a large one and put it up in your
workspace. Now mark key dates. They could be deadlines, important meetings, travel
dates, or times when your team members are unavailable.
2. Now that you’ve got a sense of your timeline, look at your budget and staff. Do you have
everything that you need? If you foresee constraints, how can you get around them?
3. You’ll need to get smart on your topic before you head into the field. Who should you talk
to now? What will you need to read to be up to speed?
4. Answer questions like: When should my team head into the field? Will my team make one
visit or two? Will our partners be visiting? Plan for all of this. Will we need to physically
make something? How much time, money, and manpower will we need to produce it?
5. Your project plan will change as things evolve, and that’s perfectly OK. You can always
amend things as you go but make sure that you’re really thinking through your project
before you start.
Align on Your Impact Goals
Get crystal clear on the change you want to achieve, in the near-term and long-term.

Impact is a very loosely used term universally, and can be used to describe an
influence or effect on virtually anything.
• Taking time to explore and align on your impact
goals will ensure that your team and stakeholders are
all working towards the same vision of success.
• In the process you’ll uncover expectations for the
longer-term change that ultimately matters as well
for more immediate outcomes that contribute to that
change.
• It is often these more immediate outcomes, or
smaller shifts in behaviours, that will become the
focus of your design challenge.
1. Get your team together, along with others interested in the success of your design challenge. Ask everyone to
write on Post-it notes what they hope the impact of the project to be.

2. Once everyone has generated their thoughts, organize the post it notes in a vertical ‘ladder’. The most long-
term, significant, and hard to reach changes should go towards the top, with the more immediate, direct and
easy to achieve changes further down.

3. Now use the Impact Ladder worksheet to agree on and capture two statements. The first should reflect the
lasting social change of the project. This will be your long-term Impact. You’ll draw from post-its closer to the
top of your ladder to identify this. The second statement should reflect a more near-term goal, an observable
change or behavior that you want the people you’re designing for to achieve. This will be your Key Outcome.

4. At this very early stage of the project, you only need to define the Impact and Key Outcome. You’ll come back
to fill in the other worksheet steps later, when you are prototyping ideas and defining exactly how your
solution will have impact through a Theory of Change activity.

5. Your Impact and Key Outcome statements should serve as a north star for your design challenge, helping to
ensure you stay focused on your goals. Make sure any other key stakeholders are aligned with your team on
these goals too.
• Secondary Research – As you move through the
Inspiration Phase there will be moments where
you’ll need more context, history, or data than a
man-on-the-street style Interview can afford.
Secondary Research, whether done online, by
reading books, or by crunching numbers, can help
you ask the right questions.

Know your Audience - As you’re framing your design challenge,

it’s critical to know who you’re designing for and what you need to
investigate.
Having an idea of your target audience’s needs, context, and history
will help ensure that you start your research by asking smart questions.
Don’t limit your thinking just to the people you’re designing for.
You may need to consider the community around them, the services
they rely on, or even the government policies that play a role in their lives.
  Analogous Inspiration - To get a fresh perspective on your
research, shift your focus to a new context. Get out with the
team and visit a setting or situation where you might
observe the distinct activities, behaviors, and emotions
you’re looking to research.

 Guided tours - Taking a Guided Tour through the

home or workplace of the person you’re designing
for can reveal their habits and values far better than
talking to them on the street.
• Immersion – living with the people you are desining for
• Obersvation – watch and note the behavious of the target group; ask
them to document their oxn lives
• Interviews
Interviews
Recruiting Tools
Human-centered design isn’t just talking to a lot of people, it’s about talking to the right people. These
tools will make sure that your interviews really count.

• Before you start talking to the people you’re designing for, it’s
important to have a strategy around who you talk to, what you ask
them, and what pieces of information you need to gather.
• By planning ahead, and tracking who you talk to once you’ve done it,
you can be sure to have the right balance of experts and laymen,
women and men, people of different ethnicities and classes, as well
as a full range of behaviors, beliefs, and perspectives.
Interviews
There’s no better way to understand the hopes, desires, and aspirations of those you’re designing for
than by talking with them directly.

•  Whenever possible, conduct your interviews in the interviewee’s space. You can learn so much
about a person’s mindset, behavior, and lifestyle by talking with them where they live or work.
STEPS
1. No more than three research team members should attend any single interview so as to not
overwhelm the participant or crowd the location. Each team member should have a clear role (i.e.
interviewer, note-taker, photographer).
2. Come prepared with a set of questions you’d like to ask. Start by asking broad questions about the
person’s life, values, and habits, before asking more specific questions that relate directly to your
challenge.
3. Make sure to write down exactly what the person says, not what you think they might mean. This
process is all about hearing exactly what people are saying. If you’re relying on a translator, make
sure he or she understands that you want direct quotes, not the gist of what the interviewee says.
4. What the person says is only one data point. Be sure to observe your interviewee’s body language
and the context in which you’re talking.
Group Interviews
• Though a Group Interview may not offer the depth of an individual
Interview in someone’s home, it can give you a compelling look at
how a larger set of the people you’re designing for operates.
• The best Group Interviews seek to hear everyone’s voice, get diverse
opinions, and are strategic about group makeup. For example, an all-
female group might give you insight into the role of women in a
society whereas a mixed group may not.
• If you’re looking to get smart quickly on what is valuable to a
community, Group Interviews are a great place to start.
Expert InterviewThough the crux of Inspiration phase is talking with the people
you’re designing for, you can gain valuable perspective by talking to experts.
Experts can often give you a systems-level view of your project area, tell you about
recent innovations—successes and failures—and offer the perspectives of organizations
like banks, governments, or NGOs. You might also look to experts for specific technical advice.
• STEPS
1. Determine what kind of expert you need. If you’re working in agriculture,
perhaps an agronomist. In reproductive health? A doctor or policymaker may be
a good bet.
2. When recruiting your experts, give them a preview of the kinds of questions
you’ll be asking and let them know how much of their time you’ll need.
3. Choose experts with varying points of view. You don’t want the same opinions
over and over.
4. Ask smart, researched questions. Though you should come prepared with an
idea of what you’d like to learn, make sure your game plan is flexible enough to
allow you to pursue unexpected lines of inquiry.
5. Record your Interview with whatever tools you have. A pen and paper work fine.
Links and Nodes
• How to make Toast

• https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_got_a_wicked_problem_first
_tell_me_how_you_make_toast

• http://www.drawtoast.com/
For Next Week
• Have prepared a group of 5-7 for your final project
• Do some initial research on a choice of three broad topics:
– Designing out plastic waste and the circular economy
- Designing a solution to the homelessness crisis in Paris
- Your group suggestion.