Maeve Catherine

Empathy is an important step in the design process. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”

Being in an human centered industry requires one to be empathetic to people of all backgrounds. At large, companies are going to rely on user data to track their sales success but the UX designers at that company will be looking reaching deeper and personally.

IDEO is a design and consulting firm that is known for practicing design thinking. Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard explain the impact of empathy in their work through the article, Empathy On The Edge: Scaling and Sustaining a Human-Centered Approach In The Evolving Practice of Design. Being empathetic designers are given areas to prioritize and later defend, “An empathic attitude needs to be championed, nurtured, and practiced regularly. People within the organization must learn to tell stories from an empathic point of view and to ask for empathy when it’s missing. Projects need understanding, enthusiastic champions who will tell and retell stories that keep empathy alive”(Battarbee et al., 2014). People can connect with stories…truthful stories. So how can UX Designers effectively find those customer stories?

Here are a couple methods you can use to be effectively empathetic with your customers.

Empathy Mapping

Empathy mapping is a method that focuses on analyzing and presenting users actions and words through a minimum of 4 quadrants. What a users says, thinks, does and feels are the traditional focuses but in some cases there are notes that can fit in multiple places. Place the notes where it fits more based on the quadrant descriptions below.

• Says: what user says things out loud in an interview or in their natural place of work.
  • Example: A user might say to a peer that the art of getting things done is multitasking.
• Thinks: There will be some overlap between the says, feels and thinks quadrants however the thinks quadrant requires you as a content strategist to understand what they were reluctant to share.
  • Example: A user could be teaching a coworker how to use a system and say “this is an annoying process but you get used to it”.
    • The user may not be willing to say something to the system’s developer but they will tell a peer and co worker that will be struggling like they did.
• Does: What a user physically does to complete a task.
  • Example: Walks around warehouse to find a single product because there is no organization in place.
• Feels: Adjective that describes how a user feels during and after an experience. Don’t forget to give context to further explain why they feel that emotion.
  • Example: A user feels worried that if a new employee joins the team it will be difficult to teach them the obscure ways of working.

The goal of this method is to organize the driving components behind a users behavior that is observed in interviews and natural settings, in order to help find flaws in a particular system.

Sarah Gibbons, at Nielsen Normal Group, explains this method more in depth: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/empathy-mapping/

My Love/Break Up Letter to…

The Love Letter method is what it sounds like…writing a love letter to a product expressing what you appreciate and enjoy about it. Similarly, the Break Up Letter method is writing why a product was not a good fit for you.

Both methods should conducted in a group setting with multiple participants taking 10-15 minutes to write the good or bad aspects of a product or service. Participants should complete the Love and Break Up letters at different times so that they are focusing on one emotion at one time. At the end of the writing period, the letters should be read outloud anonymously and UX Designers should take note of the letters themes and patterns but also the facial expressions of participants.

With the feedback from the separate perspectives, UX Designers gain insights into what to change and what to keep the same.

For more information about this method: https://www.uxmethods.guru/method/love-letter

Beginner’s Mindset

Starting fresh can help the most intelligent person. I for one constantly find myself struggling to finish blogs and have to save what I have done, take a 15 minute break and start a new document.

To the creator a design concept can be easy to understand but for a new user the might not know where to start. Assuming a beginner’s mindset requires designers to have the curiosity of a 5 year old.

What is a 5 year old’s favorite number? Five. What is a 5 year olds favorite word? Why.

So, if you as a designer are stuck be a 5 year old for 60 minutes.

There are five steps to the beginner’s mindset:

1. Don’t Judge.
2. Question everything. “But why?” X100
3. Be truly curious. Whether something a user says is familiar or frightening you should explore the avenue.
4. Find patterns in the conversations you have with users.
5. Really listen. Absorb what and how users talk to you about your product or service.

Friendly reminder that change is good when it is for the users benefit, not only the companies. Listening to the users can prevent you, as a designer, from making unnecessary changes.

*cough* Instagram *cough*.