

the first step that we’re going to talk about in the design thinking process is empathize and this is where we get to know the humans that we’re designing for and it sounds kind of simple but it’s not understanding the feelings the needs and the pain points of the people that we are working with or designing for is actually trickier but critical to the design of robust and functional products there are a couple of things that I want to start out with saying even though the word is empathized what we’re really talking about here is the research and collection of qualitative and quantitative data quantitative data is how many times does someone click on something or eye tracking movements those would be mathematical or quantitative data points qualitative data is incorporating a lot of the visual observational research methods we’re trying to identify the feelings and needs of the humans we’re designing for and we’re trying to determine problems or pain points in the delivery of our products and services now before we begin we have to identify and focus on dropping our assumptions judgments and biases if we’re designing for a population that’s 80 years old then we have some unconscious or subconscious biases judgments about what an 80 year old person is capable of what their physical parameters are so we need to figure out what those are first so that we can put them aside because really need to go into this in a pure collection research data collection frame of mind the main techniques that we want to use in this process or observation engagement and immersion we need to spend time with the people using our products or potentially using our products if we’re designing for them there are a number of ways to do this and some of the methods that we teach and that we incorporate in our coursework are basic research what has been done before what has been done in the past what has worked what hasn’t interviews actually interview coming up with a questionnaire and delivering it through a survey or possibly shadowing if it’s service design we may want to shadow the customers clients or people that are using our product so that we can see how they actually do use them or wish to use them documentary it might be you know creating a video of the process or product in use and then sitting back and looking at what we can learn from that or having people keep journals about what it is that they’re using or it could be a visual journal it could be a written journal body language also looking at you know the person if it’s a website observation are they hunched over are they exhausted what is their body telling us so there are lots of different ways to collect this qualitative data that’s critical to the design of products that make people happy that bring them joy that create the feelings that we want them to have in the use of the things we create
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