dtduthler

[dtduthler]

1. Design thinking

Employing Empathy

Project 1:

Situation: During the first project we had chosen elderly people as our focus group for the Zuidas intervention.

Task: We were tasked with an intervention to make the a restorative pocket for the elderly in the Zuidas

Action: After we had cleared up what exactly the design challenge was we immediately wanted to hear insights from the elderly on how we could make an area more attractive for them. For this we all interviewed some elderly people.

Result: This gave us lots of useful insights into what the elderly find important and allowed us to empathize with them. This empathy would later be incorporated into our design intervention to cater to their needs.

Reflection: Interviewing the elderly to capture their wants and needs really allowed us to understand their preferences and why they had them. It allowed us to empathize with them and design an appropriate intervention.

Transfer: Always make sure that you understand your target audience. Don’t just assume you do, talk to them and make sure you do! This is something important that I will take away from this.

Project 2:

Situation: The clients we were working for had just done some research into what the needs and desires of the target audience were.

Task: We were trying to imagine the project and solution from the target audience’s point of view: If we manage to solve their problems for them, what would they say about it?

Action: We did this by doing the “magazine cover” exercise: what would be on the cover? Which quotes would be cited? What would the headline be? Etc.

Result: Doing this was REALLY important. I can’t stress it enough. It basically created a link between the subjective experiences that the clients collected and what, as naturally followed, the design intervention should achieve. 

Reflection: By empathizing with the target audience we were able to much better understand their problems and desires. In order to answer the question of “what would be talked about if this intervention is succesful?” we really had to understand their thoughts and experiences and it gave way to many new ideas and insights.

Transfer: Don’t just take people’s answers at face value and say “Well they said A, so we’ll do A and they will be happy.” Try to think of it from their point of view: If they mention A, what implications does that have for a possible solution? Also, a method like this allows you to document the insights and makes them actionable, so continue doing this as opposed to just writing down long interviews that you have to search through.

Project 3:

Situation: We were tasked with creating an experiment for people attending a meetup to share knowledge. We didn’t get any information about who would be attending, so we had to start absolutely from scratch. We found out by questioning the client that it would be a mix of researchers and business people, and because of the limited scope and time we decided to then focus on researchers as we could get into contact with them through the HvA.

Task: Create a knowledge sharing experiment for researchers attending Campus Amsterdam meetups.

Action: Through our teacher Charlie we got in contact with researchers within the HvA and interviewed them about what their motivations would be to attend a meetup and how they would (like to) share knowledge and why.

Result: We gained a LOT of insights about how these people could be encouraged to share their knowledge, which then directly lead to our final solution.

Reflection: By picking a specific group to focus on it allowed us to go in depth and really figure out their motivations, their stances on knowledge sharing, the things that would make them likely to share knowledge, etc. Employing empathy isn’t possible when you focus on too big of a group, as you really need to get into people’s minds. I think we did that wonderfully by zooming in on researchers and picking their brains.

Transfer: Identifying different groups is really important when employing empathy, as you need to make sure the insights are representative. That way empathy can optimally be employed to create new insights and ideas.

Where have I grown and why?

Using other methods to employ empathy:

In project 1 I thought employing empathy was just doing some research and interviewing to try to understand. In project two I learned that there are also other methods to use such as the magazine cover approach, and 

Where do I still need to improve?

Test

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Being comfortable with uncertainty.

Project 1:

Situation: We had chosen an idea for a restorative pocket for the elderly with the help from our client. The next step would be to think of what it would look like.

Task: Design an “experience” that the elderly walk through that allows them to restore from the modern city around them. 

Action: I was trying to pin down the function of the experience as accurately as I could. That way I was hoping to find a design that would perfectly fit the functionality. I did this by brainstorming about the best possible outcome and what that would be like. 

Result: I got a lot of more theoretical insights that sounded good on paper but were too abstract. This had me stuck in a loop where I just kept thinking about things in the abstract and that was really hard to translate to actionable ideas. This made me really uncertain about what I needed to do or design, it really just kept me away from feeling confident about what the design should be, and it took me (and the group) a whole lot longer to move on because I was constantly questioning our next moves.

Reflection: What I should have done here was draw or prototype more. In my quest for certainty I ironically got stuck in the abstract phase which prevented me from testing and experimenting and my need to be “sure” of an idea removed lots of opportunities to gain insights by just “doing”.

Transfer: Uncertainty is part of the process, and you get a lot farther when you just accept it instead of trying to be 100% certain about everything!

Project 2:

Situation: We had just met with our clients for the first time but did not feel like we had a lot of useful information to deal with. Our clients seemed very unclear on what they wanted and even divided, multiple people citing very different goals and ideas.

Task: Push our clients to decide on what they wanted us to design 

Action:

Result:

Reflection:

Transfer:

Project 3:

Situation: We had just started the 3rd project but to us it was still VERY unclear. It hadn’t been clearly explained what Campus Amsterdam was, who was a part of it, what they did and how they did it.

Task: We had been asked by Jen from Campus Amsterdam to design an experiment to help attendees of the Campus Amsterdam Meetups share knowledge amongst eachother.

Action: Because the project was still very unclear to us and attempts to clear it up weren’t super successful, we thought it best to just move forward ourselves and talk to stakeholders/do research instead of waiting for someone to further fill us in. 

Result: As a result we did a lot of research, which in this specific case did not prove to be that fruitful. However, we planned a bunch of interviews with stakeholders and those proved to be a lot more useful. We gained a lot of insights into what stakeholders wanted from Campus Amsterdam and what their needs were. We then presented our insights to Jen, who thought we were on the right track and was happy with our work so far.

Reflection: It was very much the right decision to accept the uncertainty and to move in a direction and then ask for feedback. Had we tried to clear everything up beforehad it would have taken too long and we would not have been able to come up with a good experiment. Now we just embraced the uncertainty and did what we thought was right under those circumstances. 

Transfer: Don’t fight uncertainty too much, you can’t always avoid it. Try to reduce it as reasonably as you can, but if that takes too much time just move forwards and ask feedback later. It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission in that case!