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Synchronize it. Part 3 of Empathy Series.

Interviews as a User Research method are great in giving you the big picture. Although you can always just use Surveys or any other quantitative method.

So why is it better to hear instead of read about it?

*cough* empathy *cough*

Uri Hasson has an insightful answer to this one. He did an observation of people’s brain activity while they are listening to a story under fMRI. As soon as the story starts, their brainwaves synchronize right until the end of it.

Credit: Uri Hasson

That seems logical since they hear the same words.

Then he presents another study. He has two groups of people told the same story. However, the story has a different start for each group:

Group 1:” Wife has an affair.”

Group 2: “Husband is unjustifiably jealous.”

Then the story continues the same for both groups: “It was a hot day…”

As expected, their brain’s activity synchronizes to the story but within groups. Group 1 shows different pattern opposed to Group 2.

Credit: Uri Hasson

Turns out listening is not limited to transmitting words, it’s communicating ideas beyond their literal meaning.

To me this counts as a decent explanation of what empathy might be and a good reminder of the value of direct user research methods as Interviews, Focus Groups. Moreover, it is an excellent example of how leading questions or a single statement might affect an otherwise unbiased research.

In other words — sit there, cultivate a dialogue, listen, sync and make every word count.

More on Uri Hasson’s fascinating research on TED

More on Empathy and User Research Methods from me, ha!

Part 1 of Empathy Series: What and Why about Empathy

Part 2 of Empathy Series: There’s more to Observation than meets the eye

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Empathy in Interviews was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Empathy in Interviews

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