Empathy, user research and problem framing notes — Unit 2

Empathy is the centerpiece of a human-centered design process. The Empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge.

⇒1.1 Sympathy vs Empathy

• Sympathy: Feeling sorry for someone. (Standing on the shore, watching someone drown and feeling sad for them).
• Empathy: Feeling with someone. (Jumping into the water to understand exactly how cold it is and how hard the current is pulling).

In design, this means setting aside your own assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into your users and their needs.

To truly empathize with users, designers rely on three primary activities:

• 1. Observe: View users and their behavior in the context of their lives. Note what they do, but more importantly, try to deduce why they do it.
• 2. Engage: Interact with and interview users through both scheduled and short 'intercept' encounters. Ask 'Why?' repeatedly.
• 3. Immerse: Actually experience what your user experiences for a mile or two. (e.g., If you are designing for the elderly, wear thick gloves to simulate arthritis while trying to open a jar).

When observing users in the wild (ethnography), it is easy to get overwhelmed by data. The AEIOU framework helps structure your observations.

• A - Activities: What are the people exactly doing? What is their task?
• E - Environments: What is the physical space like? Is it noisy, crowded, dark? How does the space affect the activity?
• I - Interactions: How are the people interacting with each other, or with machines? Are they frustrated?
• O - Objects: What tools, devices, or artifacts are they using?
• U - Users: Who are the people? What are their roles, demographics, and apparent emotions?

Interviews are about uncovering emotions and latent needs, not just getting 'Yes/No' answers.

⇒4.1 Best Practices for Interviews

• Ask Open-Ended Questions: Never ask 'Did you like the app?' Ask 'Walk me through how you used the app.'
• Ask 'Why' 5 Times: When a user says 'I hate this screen', ask why. They might say 'It's confusing'. Ask why again. Keep drilling down until you hit the root psychological cause.
• Look for Inconsistencies: What people say they do and what they actually do are often completely different. Watch their body language.
• Embrace Silence: When a user finishes speaking, wait 3 seconds before responding. They will often fill the silence with their deepest, most honest insight.

In statistics, you ignore outliers. In Design Thinking, you actively hunt for them.

⇒5.1 The Bell Curve

If you are designing a kitchen appliance, average users (the middle of the bell curve) have workarounds for problems and won't give you breakthrough insights.

⇒5.2 The Extremes

You interview a professional Michelin-star chef (Extreme High) and a college student who has never cooked in their life (Extreme Low). Their needs are magnified. By solving the extreme, amplified needs of these outliers, you almost always create a product that is vastly superior for the average user in the middle.

After interviewing a dozen people, you have notebooks full of raw quotes. An Empathy Map is a tool used to synthesize that data into a coherent profile.

⇒6.1 The Four Quadrants

• SAYS: Direct quotes from the user during the interview.
• THINKS: What might the user be thinking but is reluctant to say out loud? (Requires reading between the lines).
• DOES: Physical actions the user took. (e.g., Kept checking their watch, refreshed the page 5 times).
• FEELS: Their emotional state. (e.g., Anxious, excited, overwhelmed).

Contradictions between quadrants (e.g., Says 'This is easy', but Does 'Furrowed brow, took 5 minutes') indicate a massive opportunity for design intervention.

A Persona is a fictional, generalized character that encompasses the various needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of your target users.

⇒7.1 Why use Personas?

Designing for 'everyone' results in designing for 'no one'. A persona gives the team a specific human to focus on. (e.g., 'Would Tech-Savvy Tina understand this button?' is a better conversation than 'Will users understand this button?').

⇒7.2 Elements of a Persona

• Name, Photo, and Quote (to humanize them).
• Demographics (Age, Occupation, Location).
• Goals and Motivations (What are they trying to achieve?).
• Frustrations and Pain Points (What stops them?).

A Journey Map visualizes the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal, mapped over time.

⇒8.1 Structure of a Journey Map

• Phases: (e.g., Discovery, Decision, Purchase, Post-Purchase).
• Touchpoints: Every single time the user interacts with the company or product (e.g., saw an ad, clicked the website, called support).
• Emotional Curve: A line graph tracking the user's emotional state (Happy/Frustrated) at every single touchpoint.

The lowest dips in the emotional curve (the 'Pain Points') are the exact locations where the design team should focus their problem-solving efforts.

The Define mode is when you unpack and synthesize your empathy findings into compelling needs and insights, and scope a specific and meaningful challenge.

⇒9.1 The Goal of Define

To craft a meaningful and actionable Problem Statement (also called a Point of View).

If you skip this step and start brainstorming solutions right after interviewing users, your ideas will be scattered and aimless. The Define stage provides the guardrails for the rest of the project.

The biggest mistake in the Define phase is embedding a solution into the problem statement.

⇒10.1 The Ladder of Abstraction

• Bad (Solution embedded): 'The user needs a ladder to reach the high shelf.' (This forces the team to only invent better ladders).
• Good (True Need): 'The user needs to access objects stored vertically.' (This allows the team to invent ladders, step-stools, drone-retrievers, or shelves that lower mechanically).

Needs should always be verbs (activities and desires), not nouns (objects).

An Insight is not just a data point; it is a profound realization about the user's psychology that you discovered during empathy work.

⇒11.1 Data vs Insight

• Data: 'Teenagers spend 6 hours a day on social media.' (Fact).
• Insight: 'Teenagers use social media not to connect with friends, but to curate an idealized version of themselves to combat deep-seated anxiety.' (A psychological revelation).

Great problem statements are always anchored by a powerful, unexpected Insight.

A POV is your reframed problem statement. It combines the User, the Need, and the Insight into a single, actionable sentence.

⇒12.1 The POV Formula

[USER] needs to [NEED] because [SURPRISING INSIGHT].

⇒12.2 Example

• User: A busy, working single mother of two.
• Need: Needs to prepare healthy dinners in under 20 minutes.
• Insight: Because she feels crippling guilt that fast food makes her a 'bad mother', and cooking is actually her way of showing love.

This POV provides incredible emotional fuel for the Ideation phase.

Once you have a solid POV statement, you must translate it into a brainstorming prompt. This is done using 'How Might We' questions.

⇒13.1 The Psychology of HMW

• How: Assumes that solutions exist and provides creative confidence.
• Might: Lowers the stakes. We aren't saying we will do it, we are just exploring if we might. This psychological safety encourages crazy ideas.
• We: Signifies that this is a collaborative team effort, not an individual burden.

An HMW question must be scoped perfectly (the Goldilocks principle).

• Too Broad: 'How might we fix world hunger?' (Paralyzes the team, too large to tackle).
• Too Narrow: 'How might we design a cheaper plastic cup for soup kitchens?' (Embeds the solution, kills creativity).
• Just Right: 'How might we safely transport nutritious hot meals to remote communities without using refrigeration?' (Provides clear constraints but leaves the solution wide open).

The greatest value of the Define stage is looking at an old problem from a completely new angle.

⇒15.1 The Slow Elevator Problem

Tenants in a building complain the elevator is too slow. Building managers (engineers) frame the problem as: 'How might we make the elevator faster?' (Solution: Install a $100k motor).

A Design Thinker empathizes with the tenants and realizes they aren't actually in a rush; they are just bored staring at a metal door. They reframe the problem: 'How might we make the wait feel shorter?' (Solution: Install a $100 mirror. People look at themselves, get distracted, and the complaints stop).

Problems do not exist in a vacuum. Context mapping is a tool used in the Define phase to understand the broader ecosystem surrounding the user's problem.

⇒16.1 Elements to Map

• Social Context: Who else influences this user? (Family, boss, peers).
• Technological Context: What devices or infrastructure do they have access to?
• Economic Context: What are their financial constraints?
• Cultural Context: Are there cultural taboos or expectations influencing their behavior?

A solution that works perfectly in Silicon Valley might fail completely in rural India due to a mismatch in Context.

When you return from empathy interviews, you might have 500 post-it notes of observations. Affinity Diagramming is the process of organizing this chaos.

⇒17.1 The Process

• Write one observation/quote per post-it note.
• Put them all on a massive wall.
• In silence, the team physically moves the notes into logical groupings or themes.
• Once grouped, the team discusses and names the themes (e.g., 'Anxiety about Security', 'Desire for Social Status').

These themes form the core insights that generate the POV statement.

Developed by Toyota, this is a simple but powerful tool used during problem framing to ensure you are solving the disease, not just the symptom.

⇒18.1 Example

• Problem: The monument is deteriorating.
• 1. Why? Because harsh chemicals are used to clean it.
• 2. Why? To clean up the massive amount of bird droppings.
• 3. Why are there so many birds? Because they eat the spiders.
• 4. Why are there spiders? Because they eat the gnats.
• 5. Why are there gnats? Because they are attracted to the high-intensity lights left on at dusk.

Solution: Change the timer on the lights. (If you didn't ask 5 Whys, you would have just invented a milder cleaning chemical).

An alternative or complement to User Personas. JTBD focuses on the progress a user is trying to make in a specific circumstance, rather than their demographics.

⇒19.1 The Milkshake Anomaly

Clayton Christensen studied why people bought fast-food milkshakes at 8:00 AM. Demographics didn't explain it. He realized the 'Job' they were 'hiring' the milkshake to do was: 'Keep me occupied during a long, boring morning commute, and keep me full until noon.'

By framing the problem around the 'Job', you realize your competitors aren't other milkshakes; your competitors are bagels and bananas.

By the end of the Define stage, the team has transitioned from exploring a massive, vague universe of user data into a sharp, laser-focused mission.

⇒20.1 The Deliverable

You exit this stage with a few perfectly crafted 'How Might We' questions, anchored by deep psychological insights into your user.

These HMW questions are the seeds. In the next stage (Ideation), you will throw water on them and watch 1,000 crazy solutions grow.