In this Make:able toolkit, we’ll be guiding you in developing empathy for your end user. This involves:
Watch the overview video below before going through the sections to plan and implement your empathy strategy.
* In terms of framing a specific challenge to solve, you might find that when you first meet your end user, they already have something in mind that they’d like designing for them. This is a great starting point but don’t forget to go through the full empathy process and learn about all aspects of their lives. Firstly, you might discover surprising things that help you to reframe the challenge in a better way or you might discover a completely different and more important challenge to take on (more info on framing challenges later in the toolkit). And secondly, regardless of whether the challenge is reframed or not, you’ll gain a whole range of insights that will help you when it comes to designing.
Here are a range of methods you might use to develop empathy for your end user. Browse through and select ones that might be suitable for your challenge. The methods you select might depend on the type of end user you are designing for, or their preferences. For example, if designing for a Champion, you might not be able to interview them. Therefore you could opt for online research, simulations, and a hypothetical empathy map.
* You don’t have to stick to the methods in this toolkit – feel free to explore others!
Online research can be an invaluable tool in the design process as it allows you to gather insights from multiple global sources in a short period of time. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you can 'stand on the shoulder of giants' but where possible, ensure you couple this with your own primary research methods.
Interviews are a great way to thoroughly understand the needs and wants of your end users. In addition to revealing answers to your planned questions, the direct face-to-face nature of interviews can lead to surprising insights that you might not have considered. The key to a good interview is careful and considerate planning.
Simulating the experience of your intended end user allows you to step into their shoes - to thoroughly understand the physical and emotional aspects of a specific activity. Simulation activities are not a replacement for interactions with real end users but they give designers important and empathetic knowledge.
Observations are a creative approach to learning about those we are designing for without interfering with their natural behaviours. When performing observations, ensure you plan suitable activities that your end user is comfortable doing.
Challenge mapping is a method used for identifying pain points in an individual’s daily routine. It is particularly useful when your end user struggles with multiple tasks throughout the day as it can help you to hone in on the most important area. It works best when combined with other methods such as interviews. Check out the video below and to access the challenge mapping template with examples, copy and paste this link into your browser - https://bit.ly/3fml2JU.
Empathy maps are a great way to bring together the highlights from interviews, observations and other practical methods - ensuring teams have a common understanding of their end user. Simply create a quad chart (with the labels: says, thinks, does, feels) and map out key insights in the relevant quadrants. The activity encourages you to think about your end user from multiple angles and provides you with an organised dataset that can be analysed for trends and opportunities.
Here are a variety of tips and strategies to consider for your empathy approach. As you browse through, make notes of any key points that could help you when developing empathy.
A good strategy is to combine a practical empathy method with a mapping method. For example, you might perform a user interview and use your insights to create a challenge map. Alternatively, if designing for a Make:able Champion, you might perform a careful observation of their case study video and make educated assumptions to create an empathy map.
Check out this conversation with Chad Leaman and Justin Pezzin from Makers Making Change, where they talk about best practices for working with people with disabilities.
Andy Lin, Founder and Director of The Emerging Tech Lab at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, talks to us about getting to know your end users and not just their disability.
Documenting your empathy studies is very important but your priority is to ensure your end user is comfortable with your methods. For example, if they are uncomfortable speaking on camera, you might suggest an audio recording or use photography and notes.
Remember that both you and your end user share the common goal of achieving a life-improving solution. As long as you are respectful and make them feel comfortable, don't be afraid to ask difficult questions. It's important to focus your efforts on learning about them rather than only sympathising with them.
When developing empathy, we want to get both a broad overview of their lifestyle but also in-depth insights into individual activities. For example, if you're interviewing your end user and come across an interesting point about a specific task they struggle with, dig deep into that to fully understand it and don't be afraid to veer off from your initial interview plan/questions.
When planning and implementing your empathy studies, you don’t need to worry about the fine details of your submission video. However, it’s very important to capture good quality footage of your journey. We recommend documenting absolutely everything, so at the end of your journey, you have an abundance of media to assemble into a final video. You won’t necessarily use all this footage in your final video but it’s much better to have an excess rather than a shortage.
In this section, we highlight several examples of how other teams have documented their empathy studies. Browse through the gallery and make note of how you could document your own journey. Once you’ve completed this task, plan when and where you will conduct your empathy work, and assign roles within your team. Then, put your empathy strategy into action!
* In addition to the tips and examples below, we encourage you to pay close attention to clear, high-quality audio, as it will greatly enhance the overall impact of your video.
When interviewing end users, we recommend setting up your camera in a still position using a tripod or another means of stabilisation. This allows you to focus on the interview itself. Don’t worry about any mistakes too as these can be edited out afterwards.
You may consider asking your end user to perform various tasks that you can record. In this example, the team used multiple camera angles, which gives the viewer more perspective.
Another observation technique is to ask your end user to go about their daily routine and capture footage of them in context. This is a great way to make parts of your video look natural without too much ‘staging’.
In addition to documenting information about their disability, bring the video to life by including footage of your end user’s hobbies, interests and personality. These insights can also inspire the actual look and feel of your design further down the line.
B-Roll is supplementary footage that is used in between your primary scenes to add context, texture and interesting layers to your final video. Short background clips of your activities are a great b-roll technique to show your team in action.
Random clips from your end user’s life are another b-roll technique that can be used in the introductory scenes of your video.
Top-down shots such as this example arthritis simulation can break up your regular scenes. They work great with a good quality voice over.
Don’t forget to document the insights you gained from your empathy studies. This example shows a screen recording of key learnings.
Before you implement your empathy strategy:
After you’ve completed your empathy strategy:
With your empathy studies complete, it’s now time to frame the challenge. In simple terms, this means analysing your key insights to hone in on a specific challenge or set of challenges that you will aim to solve. Remember the goal is to figure out what challenge to solve, not what solution to make! A good way to do this is to explore multiple How Might We statements before selecting the most suitable one. Take a look at the below examples. Then spend a few minutes experimenting with How Might We questions before selecting one to take forward.
For Bev, who has highly limited mobility in her hands, we might frame the challenge as - ‘How might we help Bev to independently control her TV?’. A key thing to note here is that we are not suggesting a solution. A poor example of a How Might We question would be, ‘How might we help Bev to press buttons on her remote’. Although the solution may involve the remote, by framing it in this way, we are completely limiting ourselves to only thinking about one design avenue.
For Cath, who has osteoarthritis, we might frame the challenge as – ‘How might we help Cath to comfortably stand up from various positions in her boat?’. Again, we are not suggesting a solution at this stage. A poor example would be, ‘How might we create handles to help Cath stand up comfortably in her boat?’.
In addition to framing the challenge, you can also start to list out initial design criteria. Think of these as the essential ‘must-haves’ for your solution. Since you’re still early in the process and don’t yet have a specific design in mind, these criteria will be broad, but it’s useful to capture them at this stage. Base your list on the insights you’ve gathered so far. For example, the device might need to be ‘non-intrusive and subtle,’ or it could require ‘sustainable manufacturing’ if your end user values eco-friendly solutions. Write down your list to guide your design journey.
Here is a selection of optional resources that you may wish to watch/use, depending on your challenge context and time constraints.
In this stage of Rob’s Make:able Challenge, he shares his process of developing empathy for Cath, which involved an interview, observation studies and much more.
Join Shanelle Waiting, the Makers Making Change Alberta coordinator, as she presents a session about disability awareness training. A great resource that shares support and advice for interacting with people with disabilities.
Before moving on to the next toolkit, you should have achieved the below objectives.
If you are using the workbook, you can tick these off at the bottom of Section 4, and make note of any key learnings or important things to remember.
Go to Next Toolkit – Idea Generation