Empathy - does designers always need to be empathetic what is empathy mapping

What is this empathy? Does designers always needs to be empathetic? Somebody is telling empathy mapping is important. What is this word actually right? Why it is coming in the field of design? All these things are going to be answered in this podcast. Let's dive into the topic. Foreign guys, welcome, welcome. This is Jagdish. Thank you for staying tuning in with me and decide to change podcast and lot of there is an overwhelming response from different country people and impressions have gone close to 4,000 plus. And thank you so much for this overwhelming response everybody. I hope you are all liking the content and the materials and pieces whatever we are posting. So please feel free to share to your friends and also if they need any help we can recommend this so that everything we will be answering and addressing to the podcast. Whatever pain points designer community is facing. Okay, so today there is one such pain point called how to do empathy. They call empathy mapping is very important. That's really required. Let me tell you guys what is mean by empathy is understanding your user in a more deeper way. It's not necessarily a user, it is understanding anything. If you're empathetic towards certain things, you're going beyond what is human meaning? Sympathy, right? So many people know the sympathy word meaning sympathy is just understanding what others are feeling and then you are feeling bad. Oh yeah, this person is feeling sad. Oh my God. Yeah, let's go and cheer him up. Yeah, cool. Empathy is something very different. Empathy is going into that person's shoe and really thinking and standing with them and really even crying if they had some problem. And you are also feeling the same way as if they are. So empathy is more deep. That is why in designers community it is good to develop a habit of empathy when you're talking to your customers. Because the more better you understand your customer journey, your customer pain point, your client or the people's psychology, the better you will be able to solve the problem. This is the importance of doing this empathy. And if you're able to map it, then it called mapping simple. So you don't have to worry about this jargon words and all, but understand the intention of this podcast Designer needs to be more passionate towards understanding the user. That's it. If you want to call empathy, you can call. If you want to call anything, you can call it. That's totally fine. Okay, so here I'm going to be giving you eight different steps how you can build empathy towards your customer. The first thing is define your Persona, define your audience. What is the age group? What is the gender you're Targeting, what is their location, what is their background, what are their motivation, what are their goals, what are their frustrations? So try to understand the real Persona of the audience. That's the first way you can start getting more clearer in your empathy mapping. Second is gather more information about them. Once you found out your Personas, conduct interviews, physical field studies, surveys, online methods. Observe naturally their behavior and traits so that you can gather as much information as possible. So that your users are exactly thinking the same way which you are also thinking and you are also tuning to how they are thinking. Ideally this is correct. If you think in your user's perspective, thinking like how they think, then you will be a better empathetic designer. Okay, so once you do that, then you can move for the third step to identify their pain points, what is their gains, what is their real pain areas and struggles, what they are facing. This is a very, very important step. And the fourth important thing is categorizing information. See guys, there is an interesting fact also there is something called head, heart, hand, feet. If you're not able to empathize properly with somebody, you can use this method. Head stands for how do you think and feel? Okay, you can ask this question for your user. Second, heart, what is your real feeling and what's your motivation behind working in that? Right? People get this question, what's your emotional connect for that heart to heart connection? They call. So what is really driving to be motivated to take action? You need to find out that many point of time. If you ask this kind of a question, you will find out exactly the users need. Our objective is to understand the people and solve the problem. That's it. Right? Remember this always. If you're doing a process and if you feel like lost, lot of people don't come back not knowing what they're exactly solving. So you need to always remember what we're exactly solving needs to come in your mind first. The third is hand. What are the action and behavior, what they take? Fourth is feet. What is the environment? How do they react with that? See head, heart, hand, feet. H H H, yeah, they call. If you're able to find out this clearly, you will be able to categorize the information properly in a whole empathy mapping of your customer. Okay, and the fifth step is mapping the thoughts, mapping that feelings, mapping that action, mapping that environment properly. If you wanted to do it in a scale, you can do. If you want to do it in a drawing, you can do. If you want to do it in a user flow, you can do flowchart. You can do not a problem. Ideally speaking, you should document it and map it. And then if you're able to find out a pattern out of it, then you are able to get more clearer on what is your user need. Why is the user really struggling? See, sometimes user will not even tell what is this problem? This is a big problem. When you ask customer, he'll say, I'm okay with the existing problem. I mean existing solution itself. Why do you wanted to redesign? Maybe your company would have invested some money, right? But if you watch closely, customers are used to get their habits and habitat and run in their regular routine. They won't feel it like a pain point at all. So at that point of time, you need to be empathetic to understand what is the pain point is going through. And when you provide a solution, customer will be really happy. Right? So this is why empathy mapping comes in picture. Many times people will not tell you what they want. And you can find out that in a more clear, precise and a structure and analytical way. See, there are many tools to do it, but as much as possible, you can do it in a chart paper, or you can do it in word or ppt or even you can use a software called Miro. That's more than enough. You don't have to worry about fancy stuff. Okay? And the sixth important question is asking specific question. See guys, questioning and listening is the biggest skill which a designer you need to have. I've already recorded a deep podcast for it. You can check back there. Because if you're not able to understand your user by asking question and listening to them, how come you will empathize with them, right? There are many type of questions available. You can ask open ended questions, you can ask closed questions. Closed question is like hey, do you really like this app or not? They can say only yes or no, right? And you can say, okay, what is making you happy when you're interacting? This app that is called open question, people can answer five sentences also. So you should know when to ask open questions, closed questions based on the audience, you should remember what and how will be. Sometimes like open question, people can talk for longer time questions like where, when, which it will be more focused and closed question, which year? When was your date of birth? 1991. People say that, right? So it's very specific. They can answer two answers. So know where to ask generic questions and ask specific questions. You can use Chat GPT nowadays the Chat GPT model is really well trained so that you can use some of the methods and some of the questions you can ask open ended questions, closed questions to have a framework. See, do not trust the tools blindly. Just use the tools so that you can able to get more clarity in whatever you wanted to really ask for. The second is once you have that clarity, then you can revise that input what ChatGPT has given you. Okay? Because if you are able to think through and then refine your questions, then and only that will become a real good question. Don't just copy paste from ChatGPT or whatever online tools you're using. That's really bad. A lot of times people love the tools. Don't love the tools, use the tools. Okay? And the very important question is you can ask the questions relating to head, heart, hand, feet. I'll tell you why. Goals and like, let's say to find the goals you can ask questions like what's your goal? You can ask questions like heart, what's your motivation? How do you feel? You can ask something like what's your action? What's your behavior? How is your behavior change when you use this app, when you use this product, how is the interaction with your environment? Feed so you can remember this head, heart, hand feed using this question method so that you can specifically question to get some answers. So this is the sixth way which you can use to build a very good empathy chart. The seventh way is validate with your user. Please ask your user, hey, is this what it is you are looking for? If sometimes they are not able to give you answers, conduct some workshops, See through activities, people tell you. Yeah, yes, exactly. This is what I want. Yeah, correct, correct. People will not tell you deliberately on the one go. Of course they will not. Right? So you should be able to find a creative method to take that information out or maybe find out something else also even lot many hidden things will also be there. That's why having a free workshop and collaboration with your client or customer will help you lot many times to validate your empathy findings. 8th is please iterate guys. See guys, if you're not iterating in project, if you're not iterating this process, you will not get a clarity in what your customer really wants. See, there are a lot of dynamic things which will happen in the project while you go along. You need to have a tracker with your empathy mapping properly built so that it dynamically tracks the evolution of your user with the project. How the users are behaving. When you're testing this model, how people are reacting, can you iterate there? So when you're able to build it from the Day one you will get a more clarity on how to iterate. Okay, so this is the eight steps guys. So let me repeat it. To build a very good empathy map, first you need to define your Persona, age, gender, location. And second is you need to gather data by conducting interviews and surveys and observe their behavior. Third is identifying their pain points and gains. Fourth is asking mean categorizing the information in terms of head, heart, hand, feet by finding their goals, motivation, action and environment, what they interact. And fifth is mapping out their thought, feelings, action and environment. Okay, and 6th is asking specific question which is open ended question, close question, generic question, specific question, what, where, when, how, which to get more answers. And seventh is validate with your user to cross check it. And eight is iterate over the process. When you're doing it, if you're able to do it, chances are you will be building a great empathy mapping which is foolproof, rugged and so solid. You will not just get pulled away by any other team saying why are you in this process? What is the real purpose of this project? Is this the real problem with your customer? A lot of random people will come and ask you this question. When you're building a solution in your design studio to knock off all these people, this map really helps you a lot. So that they'll be not asking you anything and they'll be patiently seeing, okay, there is a tangible benefit out of it. Let this guy work. Because in many design non design organizations, designers are still working. They feel this problem. People don't validate their work. They think designers are just making some cool screens and fancy 3D models. No, that's not the point. We are going beyond psychology to understand the user. So if you are able to prove it properly, then you get that respect, right? Many times it's required also to make that show off properly in a meaningful show off, not a namesake show off. And there are some learning materials also guys. So I'll suggest you free material you can download from Nielsen Norman Group. There are a lot of empathy map which is proven also which I'll be pasting you to the feed in the PDF file also. And I'll be pasting that link also in that particular podcast you can download it. And there are some resources which you can use like tools such as Miro Mural and Real Time Board and Real Time Board and Miro are now together and you can use Idea Toolkit for empathy mapping. You can use V Plane for empathy mapping. So these are all some of the tools which you can use for building your empathy mapping. Okay. So I hope you would have understood the intention of why we are doing it, how to do it, and how we can even validate it using the eight steps. Thank you so much guys. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. And if you find this useful, please give me a better rating in Spotify and Apple. And if you want to take my mentorship, send me an email. I'll make you. If you're qualifying, I will also be helping you to earn good amount of salaries and good position and become a creative designer in your career. Okay, thank you so much guys. Take care. Bye Bye. She like the way I.