Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Sameer Dwivedi

Almost every company or business has put innovation and customer-centricity as their core business driver and design thinking as their go-to framework for innovation. The outcome of any solution (product or service design) has to be seen and perceived as valuable, desirable and innovative considering human values at every stage. In the context of design community, every designer strive to bring their work as much as close to business vision, users articulated and unarticulated needs to stay innovative and relevant to today’s changing market paradigm. A big part of the Design Thinking concept involves empathy for those you are designing for. Hence the cliche mantra, “Put yourself in user shoes”, “Know thy user”, “Understand User need before Wants” , “Understand user hierarchy of needs” and many more. Easier said than done, the challenge is majority of users has limited capacity to drive solutions, possibly describe solution and guide innovation. Hence, it is important for designers to deep-dive and uncover those hidden and unarticulated needs to drive innovative design solutions.

Similar to the fundamental Maslow hierarchy of needs, a user goes through different level of motivation before caring for their wish list. A doctor managing appointments using a old-fashioned diary is better off with a simple interface to manage patients and probably feel little need of interactive dashboard with built in state-of-the-art artificial intelligence. The pyramid below represents different stages of UX relevance to users.

All the needs and wants are important to make user empowered and make them feel good. If you want to nail user experience, as a designer you need to understand the different level of user needs. Their are various examples where companies have adopted empathy as a tool to nail down customer-centricity. SapientRazorfish_ talks about creating a platform leveraging AI, Data analytic and other emerging technologies to put and re-imagine business through radical customer centricity. Apple Geniuses are well known to have Do’s and Don’ts of customer management, down to specific words you are not allowed to use and capitalize on body language clues.

The pursuit of acknowledging and building a personal connect with users is not limited to design business and can be seen in Health Care, Socio-Economical Development, Micro-Financing , NGO and Sales. While we intuitively understand need of better understanding our users, it requires an important tool which is — Empathy.

The designer bias , sometime referred as Malkovich Bias can potentially damage the user experience. William Hudson in Reduced Empathizing Skills Increase Challenges for User-Centred Design, talks –

“One of the biggest issues, certainly for those with no HCI or usability experience, is a lack of appreciation of how users think and work. Their assumption is that users will approach and solve problems in the same way as the designers and developers of an interactive solution. Extreme examples of this self-as-user outlook is the belief that interaction problems are either the direct fault of users or the failure of users to follow instructions.”

Empathy by definition is ability to be aware of, understand and sensitive to other people thoughts and feelings. Research suggests that empathy thinking helps us see understand context , impact our cognitive behavior and thus helps in putting ourselves in someone else shoes. In design context, empathizing with user articulated, unarticulated needs and wants helps us solve design challenges.

A design environment that build around trust fosters empathy. Everyone has some level of compassion which is not difficult but building design solutions with a sense of purpose based on empathy requires a framework. Interaction Design Foundation talks about developing empathy for your target group using four general steps —

Discovery — Observe whom you are designing for. Who are these people and their basic needs, wants and expectation from the solution. Enter their world.
Immersion — Looking at what people do in their day to day life. Explore their current work situation and environment.
Connection — Connect their story with yours. Hear their version of pain points and why certain thing works or does not work.
Detachment — While it is easy to get carried away with all qualitative feedback, it is also important to wear the designer hat again covert the empathetic insights into design ideas.

Their are many ways to achieve empathy goal. One that is used widespread in User research is empathy maps. An empathy map is a collaborative tool that can be used to understand.

What people think and feel (Preoccupations)? — What are their behavioral and emotional beliefs?
What do they hear (Influences)? How user get influenced by other people experiences ?
What do they see (Environment)? How things around them affects them?
What do they say and do (Behavior)? What is their attitude and behaviors ?
What are their pain points (Fear, Frustrations, Obstacles)? What blocks them.
What does success / achieving / completing the task look like (Wants, Needs , Measure of Success)?

How does Persona Empathy Map help design teams ?

Builds a culture of customer-centricity
It reveals the “how”, “what” and “why” behind user behavior, actions, choices and decisions
It helps in understanding user articulated and unarticulated needs
It brings all stakeholders together and make everyone feel users as human
It bring a common understanding that some features or changes can influences users and paves the way for innovation

The final takeaway

In order to meet user articulated and unarticulated need , it is important to have deep user insights. Any innovative solution fundamentally solves the core user needs and it is important for designers to arm themselves with methods and tool to uncover and address user pain points, needs and wants. An empathetic insights can help seeing the world differently.

Food for thought: Baby in the well — The case against Empathy

References and More Resources on the Topic

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Empathy fuelled Customer-Centricity

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