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HCD CoE Tip: You can learn more about the six HCD phases shown above
by visiting the HCD Center of Excellence Confluence site.

EMPATHETIC DESIGN

HCD is about putting people at the center of your design. And to do that, you first need empathy. Empathetic design means getting into the end-users’ heads—or “walking a mile in their shoes”—to really understand their experiences and problems in order to uncover the most relevant and effective solutions. You’ll then continue experimenting, testing, and refining those ideas until you have a solid final product.

In theory, it’s easy to make assumptions from behind a desk about what users want. After all, you’re the expert, right? But if you aren’t taking time to understand the user experience and listening to people, you might miss opportunities to design solutions that people actually need. 

That’s Bad for Users. And Bad for Design. 

That’s why establishing empathy during the design process is critical. Developing an empathetic approach to design allows you to shelve your assumptions and get to the heart of what people want and need. In other words, empathy helps you understand the problem better, ultimately leading to better solutions. 

EMPATHETIC OBSERVERVATION 

To understand people and connect with their experiences and problems, one must be an empathetic observer. How is that achieved? Empathy in research isn’t something that necessarily comes naturally, but it’s a skill that can be cultivated. 

When approaching project research:

• Let go of your ego. It’s not about you. To understand and empathize with users, let go of assumptions and preconceived notions, and focus on the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of your users. 
• Embrace humility. While you may be an expert in your profession, that doesn’t mean you know everything… well, maybe you do. Either way, practice humility while observing your users and learn about their experiences. Be open to the fact that you can learn from them and be humble enough to accept new perspectives and consider solutions that hadn’t been thought of.
• Actively listen. Good listeners put aside their assumptions and quiet their inner monologue in order to take in what people are communicating. Don’t interrupt or steamroll users. Instead, let them finish their thoughts in order to fully understand their perspective and experience. 

Empathy requires practice, but as empathy is cultivated in your HCD, you’ll become a much more effective practitioner.

EMPATHETIC RESEARCH

There are four main research stages to empathetic design: discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment. Adhering to these will make sure your research is not only accurate and thorough, but also empathetic. The goal is to develop empathy for users with intention so meaningful impacts can be made on their lives. 

• Discovery—Enter the world of the user and make connections through discovery. Identify and approach users to start uncovering behaviors and the reasons (often unspoken) for their behavior.  
• Immersion—Immersion is all about putting oneself into the users’ shoes. This involves fieldwork—actually going to user environments to conduct research, performing the same activities, and learning first-hand what problems and needs prevail. 
• Connection—The next component is to connect users experiences through observations and research. It’s not enough to just go through the motions by recreating a users’ experiences. It’s about getting curious and diving deeper to find what resonates. This is where true empathy is built for users’ and their specific needs.  
• Detachment—Finally, take a step back and look at the problem zoomed out to a designer’s lens. It’s OK to reflect on personal experience and learnings here, to pull out key insights and to generate ideas. 

The best HCD practitioners approach each project with a beginner’s mindset. This simply means starting with fresh eyes and no assumptions when approaching the research. This is key to the HCD process because it helps us better understand how users think about and experience problems (or products, services, and policies). While researching and observing users, always question assumptions (even if you think you know the answer already) and listen openly. 

EMPATHETIC TECHNIQUES AND METHODOLOGY

Included here are a few techniques and methods commonly utilized to explore and build empathy for users:

• Use an Empathy Map—An empathy map is a simple visual that outlines knowledge of a users’ behaviors and attitudes. Empathy maps help build empathy for users, synthesize observations, and uncover key insights from findings. We take a deeper dive into Empathy Mapping here. 

HCD CoE Tip: Empathy maps are most useful early in the design process
(after user research but before requirements and prototyping). 

• Ask the Five “Whys”—The “Five Whys” is a simple but effective problem-solving method that helps dig deeper to the heart of an issue. The premise is straightforward: when faced with a problem, ask why the problem exists. Then ask why again for the answer you came up with. Keep asking “why” three more times. (You may sound like a curious toddler, but repeatedly asking “why” is a powerful method for understanding a problem on a deeper level).  

Each time you ask why, you force yourself to move past surface-level symptoms to the root cause. When you reach the end, you reveal a single reason for your issue and can then brainstorm a solution (also known as a “countermeasure”) to address the cause of the problem (rather than its symptoms). 

• Create Customer Journey Maps—Both empathy and customer journey maps help HCD practitioners get into the heads of users to focus on their needs. 

Each mapping type is built from the customer point of view, but Customer Journey Mapping visualizes the entire customer experience over time, whereas empathy maps hone in on a narrow view of a specific persona. In fact, multiple empathy maps can be incorporated into one customer journey map to illustrate user experiences at each unique touchpoint along the way. 

• Conduct Interviews with Empathy—User interviews are a core part of HCD. Meeting with customers face-to-face to ask them about their experiences, feelings, and behaviors is a powerful way to understand users more intimately (and accurately). This process will both build and require empathy. 

To get the best results: 

• Prepare a list of questions ahead of time.
• Keep asking “Why?” to delve deeper into people’s behaviors.
• Leave your assumptions at the door.
• Listen intently.

As we realize empathy with “others,” we actually become better at realizing empathy within ourselves. Have you ever had an experience where you were trying really hard to write clearly for other people, and it actually helped you better understand what you were thinking? How about the time when you tried to teach something to others, and it actually helped you better learn the material yourself?

Provided that it stems from a genuine and sincere motive, realizing empathy can be intrinsically reciprocal. Not reciprocal in the sense of giving and receiving gifts, but in the sense that the act of giving is in-and-of itself an act of receiving. This is neither selfish nor altruistic. It is simply a loop that cannot be untangled without losing its meaning. By remaining open and humble, answers will be uncovered to questions you wouldn’t have otherwise thought to ask. 

HCD CoE Tip: Gather and summarize your interview data via empathy maps to better contextualize
the information and bring out new insights. (link to empathy mapping article and video)

Practicing HCD with empathy takes practice—but luckily, it’s an iterative process, so you’ll have lots of time to get it right.