One of the most important aspects of UX design is connecting with the users of your product.

But how are we supposed to connect with our users and truly understand them, and then execute what they need from us as designers?

One word: Empathy

Empathy is our ability to see the world through other people’s eyes — to see what they see, feel what they feel, and experience things as they do.  This is critical for us to utilize empathy to build a product that will be successful for both the users and the companies we design them for. Empathy being at the center of UX design also ties into the larger concept of human-centered design. 

How can we begin to use Empathy when researching our consumers’ wants and needs before designing the product?

The first research method I’d recommend is contextual interviews. This is where you can collect a party of your target users and develop a series of tasks or questions based on the need or want for the product you are designing. I personally have seen great success in this research method and found it particularly helpful to have a mock-up or prototype to go along with this research method. It helped my team and me further gather insights for our Gen-Z-tailored finance app, Wallet Wize. You can start the session by observing and not asking any questions. I was able to gain more insights by asking fewer questions and listening more to the comments and insights the test consumer gave during the interviews, and then adjusting accordingly.

Here I have the full pdf for WalletWize and the impact our contextual interviews had on our findings:

The next research I’d consider would be seemingly simple in theory, but important in truly getting to know your consumer is shadowing. This is where we, as the researchers, really dive into the environment of the consumer. It lets us observe a problem that might be occurring — gives a holistic view of how the service is operating in the real world among real-time interactions — but also uncovers problems or inter-related problems that might not already be known to the business. Again, as the researcher, we are mainly to observe and take notes on how the consumer goes about using the product and its flow in their lives. 

The final research method I’d consider is to storyboard. This allows the researcher to be more hands-on and creative about depicting the consumer’s experience with the product. Storyboarding can be done digitally or physically without ever leaving your own office. This also allows us to develop highlights of the product and then maybe even discover issues that would cost the company money and time. This gives us an opportunity to first gain alignment and then take that as a guide to uncover the next phase of research with customers or users.

I can guarantee if you begin to implement any of these three research methods early on to you design process you will have a success design or a clear vision of refinement.

Sources:

Han, Esther. “What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important? | HBS Online.” Harvard Business School Online, 18 Jan. 2022, online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-design-thinking

Wiecek, Ale. “9 Best Empathic Research Methods to Help You Dig Deeper & Truly Understand Your Customer.” Medium, Medium, 13 Aug. 2018, medium.com/@alewiecek/9-best-empathic-research-methods-to-help-you-dig-deeper-truly-understand-your-customer-5a9b56c45e59