EMPATHIZE AND

DEFINE
Prepared By
Dr. Arjuna Muduli
Associate Professor
Dept of ENTC
Reminder: Three Goals of Empathetic Research

1. Learn what the customer (or user) THINKS

2. Learn what the customer (or user) FEELS
3. Learn what the customer (or user) DOES

MIND HEART ACTIONS

Design Thinking: Getting Started with Empathy

The first stage (or mode) of the Design Thinking process involves developing a
sense of empathy towards the people you are designing for, to gain insights
into what they need, what they want, how they behave, feel, and think, and
why they demonstrate such behaviors, feelings, and thoughts when interacting
with products in a real-world setting.

EMPATHIZE: Observing to Build Context

 What is Empathy?
➢ Design Thinking cannot begin without a deeper understanding of the people you
are designing for.
➢ In order to gain those insights, it is important for you as a design thinker to
empathize with the people you’re designing for so that you can understand their
needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations.

In Design Thinking, empathy is a Human-Centered Design

Toolkit, a “deep understanding of the problems and realities
of the people you are designing for”. It involves learning
about the difficulties people face, as well as uncovering
their latent needs and desires in order to explain their
behaviors.
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=1E39jpNN9eQ
What Observations would Work for our Project?

• Whom would we observe?

• Where would we observe them?
• When would we observe them?
• How would we observe them?
• What would we look for?
Success with Empathy: The Embrace Warmer
• With empathy, we can gain insights that could not
be gathered by any other methods short of highly
accurate calculated guesses. A team of postgraduate
students at Stanford were tasked with developing a
new type of incubator for developing countries.
Their direct contact with mothers in remote village
settings who were unable to reach hospitals, helped
them to reframe their challenge to a warming device
rather than a new kind of incubator.
 Empathize
❑ Three steps to have Deep understanding of the problems and realities
of the people:-

Step 1: Observe

• How users interact with their

environment.

• Capture quotes, behaviors and other notes

that reflect their experience.

• Notice what they think, feel, need

 Step 2: Engage
• Interviews scheduled or ad-hoc

• Learn how to ask the right questions

Step 3: Immerse
• Find ways “to get into the user’s shoes”

• Best way to understand the users’ needs

 OUTCOME OF EMPATHY - INSIGHTS
INSIGHTS - The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of
someone or something
▪ Empathy interviews are used to gather insights.
▪ These insights can then be used to identify issues and generate potential solutions.
▪ Insights form the cornerstone of the design and innovation process, a lighthouse
for what you should do next, and a catalyst for creating new value for your
customers.
▪ The ever-increasing explosion of data puts more knowledge at our fingertips than
ever before, but you need to know what to do with it.
Empathies Methods
The following are our favorite Empathize
methods:
1. Skilled Interview
2. Focus Group
Focus Group vs. Skilled Interview
 Focus Group vs. Skilled Interview

Focus Groups Skilled interview

A group of user of similar mindset will be One to one interaction
interviewed
The panellists interact with each other The subject interacts only with the
interviewer
Often leads to unexpected insights More refined insights
More activities, surveys etc Open/Direct questions
 Empathize, ask What – How - Why
• Tool to help you better observe
• Especially good for analyzing through photos
• What you should do for a specific observation
• Divide a sheet into 3 parts – What / How / Why
• What = write what you observe, the user is doing without
making assumptions
• How = understand what the user is doing
• Why = now you have to interpret; guess motivations and
emotions, make assumptions that you have to test with
users later
 Empathize – Ask the 5 whys
• Repeating the Why question 5 times to identify the root
cause of a problem

• Some useful rules

• Write down the problem and make sure that all people
understand it.

• Distinguish causes from symptoms.

• Pay attention to the logic of cause-and-effect relationship.

• Never leave "human error", "worker's inattention", "blame John" etc., as the root cause.

• When you form the answer for question "Why" - it should happen from the customer's point
of view.
 Six Key Features
What’s a Focus Group?

People Provide data

Conducted with a Data are qualitative

series of groups in nature

Possess certain Discussion is

characteristics focused
DEFINE –
Analysis of Research,
Defining Needs
EMPATHY
▪ Outcome : Insights

Process:
➢ Focus groups
➢ Skilled Interviews

Next….
Tuesday, November 28,
2023

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Needs…

• Does costumer really know his/ her

needs
 DEFINE : TRANSFORMS INSIGHTS TO NEEDS

Analyse the Insights Define the needs

▪ Define : Analyze Insights filter out the wants and Identify Needs

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 22

 Analogy

Design Thinking Detective- Investigation

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Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

 Analysis of Insights

Personas
POV Statements and Questions
Needs

Nuggets
24 Customer Journey Maps
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

 • Personas are fictional characters, which are created
based upon research in order to represent the different
user types that might use your service, product, in a
similar way.

• They reflect the likes and dislikes of a user segment

PERSONA
• Helps to recognize that different people have different
needs and expectations

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 25

PERSONA

Job Profile

AGE
PERSONA
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PERSONA
1.Personas aren’t guesses at what a target user thinks. Every aspect of a
persona’s description should be tied back to real data (observed and
researched).
2.Personas reflect real user patterns, not different user roles. Personas aren’t a
reflection of roles within a system.
3.A persona focuses on the current state (how users interact with a product),
not the future (how users will interact with a product).
4.A persona is context-specific (it’s focused on the behavior and goals related
to the specific domain of a product).
NUGGET
FORM
What is a Nugget?

• Nugget: A fun way to remember an insight

Insight : The capacity to gain an accurate
and deep understanding of someone or
something
An example of insight is understanding
how a computer works. A perception
produced by this ability.
The Nugget is the Insight

The poster is not the Nugget!

Words to Remember

The value of innovation is NOT in the

IDEA

The value of innovation is in the

INSIGHT
Example

Insight - All the water ecosystem is polluted

with plastic waste
 Step 3-Define :
Empathy>Persona>Customer Journey
Maps > POV
Customer Journey Map

• The figure shows the journey

according to the needs of the
Click to add text customers
What is a Customer
Journey Map?
• It is a map or a diagram that
depict the stages customers go
through when interacting with
Product or a service.

✓ It shows PROCESS from start to end

which a customer experiences.
✓ It is a way to document what to DO
Whereas, persona focuses more on
what to THINK and FEEL.
 4.Lane
Example: Personalised Learner
Story Board Lane

Pointed out in
class

Text Lane

Cannot focus on Looks out Enters into

class of the
Pointed in Feels like Jail
imaginary world Class
class

• Lane with images is called a story board

• Lane with text is called a Text lane
 • A Point Of View (POV) is a
meaningful and actionable
problem statement, which
will allow you to ideate in a
POINT OF goal-oriented manner.
VIEW • captures your design vision

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 Two Kinds of Point of View Statements

ROLE-BASED POINT OF VIEW STATEMENT

I’m a STUDENT (that’s my role), and I want to get good marks (job to be done) so I
can have a good relationship with my parents (benefit desired: affiliation)

SITUATION-BASED POINT OF VIEW STATEMENT

When I WRITE AN EXAM (that’s the situation), I feel nervous (immediate need or
problem) because I might get an embarrassing score (benefit desired: esteem).

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 Design Thinking challenges
 What can we design that will … achieve a GOAL?
 What can we design that will … in increase the approval rate to
90%?
Let’s Point of View Question…
What can we design that will … meet a Need?
Compare What can we design that will … give people LESS BRIBERY in Govt.
services?

the Two give people LESS BRIBERYMORE

INFORMATION about in Govt.
benefits?
give people LESS WAITING TIME for
Govt. services?

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