EMPATHY | THE BASICS

In the empathy stage, your goal is to set aside your own assumptions about the world in order to gain insights from your users and their needs. Seeing a challenge from another person’s perspective opens up opportunities for us to develop new ideas - becoming a tool for innovation.

How is empathy connected to innovation?

The Empathy phase is the foundation of human- centered design thinking. By entering and understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations, we can understand the choices that person makes, we can understand their behavioral traits, and we are able to identify their needs. This helps us innovate, and create products or services for that person.

Empathy is the basis for a design thinking mindset

The Empathy phase is about developing a deep understanding of the problem, qualitatively and quantitatively, seeking to answer the following overarching questions:

Who is involved in this problem? (desk research/surveys/outreach)
What is involved in this problem? (desk research/ surveys/outreach)
Why does this problem occur? (interviews)
How does this problem occur? (interviews)
What is the root of the problem or cause? (interviews and analysis)

The Why, When, How and Who?

THE GOAL | The why | Gather insights on the reality of various stakeholders relevant to the challenge you aim to tackle. This method is complimenting more common methods such as desk research through qualitative interviews. Additionally, this will support you to increase the level of trust between you and the interviewee as they feel listened to and valued.

When? | Interviews are used to prepare for new or redesign projects, workshops, or initiatives.

How? | You want to uncover stories. Stories help us connect, relate, empathize and reveal personal insights and feelings that the “designer” can only be aware of by interacting with the potential user. See our "How-to" session below to learn more.

Who? | When choosing interviewees focus on middles that fall into the “mainstream”, and extremes to also understand perspectives outside the predictable spectrum. Relevant stakeholders might have varied and contradictory needs, you need to cast a wide net when choosing who to interview.

“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”
Brené Brown

HOW DO I START?

Generating ideas is simple, but the focus needs to be on the problem at this stage, simple workshops using tools such as problem trees, mental maps, cause & effect analysis, and brainstorming are very effective, and you can generate hundreds of problems in days. To support this, an objective facilitator can guide sessions and encourage open discussions, creativity, and avoid groupthink. However, this idea generation must be validated externally, through empathy, to provide systemic insights and valuable context to this analysis.

In order to get to this point, stakeholders must be researched and validated at the beginning of a design project, by developing stakeholder mapping and their influence to understand how different variables interact with the problem and can affect any solutions or strategies that are developed. Stakeholders are those people, groups, or individuals who either have the power to affect or are affected by the endeavor you're engaged with. For WWF offices this tends to involve different actors from the private sector (companies, unions, associations), public sector (local/federal governments), and civil society (communities, NGOs, alliances). Mapping external parties affected will provide a plan for who you need to focus on in your empathy phase.