UX Design Challenge — Part 1: Empathise
Hi everyone,
Last week I announced the kickoff of a personal UX design project, a mobile app that helps users achieve their goals through public commitment, and I decided to test the app’s main assumption on myself by committing to post a new story on Medium each Friday about the process. I presented the concept, the methodologies I’ll be using and also the timeline (you can read the first story here).
This week we’re going to dive into the first phase of the Design Thinking methodology, which is the Empathize stage. This is where you get to “walk a mile in your user’s shoes”.
So let’s get to it!
Design Thinking Phase 1: Empathize
In this phase, that is usually at the beginning of the UX process, you gather as much insight as you can about the users you’re designing for, and synthesize that information so that it will guide you throughout your project to make informed decisions, by always having the user in mind. There are numerous methods to conduct user research, but usually the starting point is the User Interview.
User Interviews
Before the user research begins, a research plan should be conducted so that you clearly know your methods, the structure of the research, the purpose, and the outcome.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to discover how the target users achieve their goals. What motivates them? What tools do they use? How do they keep themselves on track? I need to get an understanding of this so that I know how to respond to their needs and challenges through the app I’m designing.
Method
5 user interviews have been conducted with people that fit in the target group. The interviews took about 10–20 minutes each.
Interview Guide
The interviews were more like a casual discussion between friends, in a laid-back environment, but a certain structure was kept, as I tried to go through all the questions below:
- Please describe your daily routine
- What motivates you?
- Do you have any personal/professional goal?
- What helps you achieve your goals?
- Does anyone know about these goal?
- What are the barriers?
- Do you use any apps that help you achieve your goals?
Data and Analysis
The interviews were recorded audio with an Iphone and certain points were written down on paper. After all the interviews were over, a thematic analysis was done identifying the main themes of the gathered information.
Target users
Before conducting the user interviews, you need to know who your users are. Are you designing a more general product, meant to be used by a wider audience? Or is your app destined to a more focused group of users, with similar behaviors and activities?
In my case, I’ve narrowed down my target users to young professionals aged 25–35, who are highly productive at their work, but struggle finding the time and motivation for their own personal goals. As common characteristics, they are forward-thinking, tech-savvy and early adopters of the latest technologies, and like to test new ideas on themselves.
Finding the right participants that represent the end-users of the app wasn’t difficult, as I’m surrounded by such individuals on a regular basis. The only issue with this was the risk of bias, as they all know me personally, and some may not have been 100% comfortable with sharing all the valuable insights about themselves that I might have needed to know. But given the fact that I will be conducting further user research and user testing in the upcoming stages of the project, having a casual conversation (that is actually an user interview) on the subject of the app is a good starting point.
Synthesizing the data
After completing the research, the next step was to synthesize the gathered information, so that I could have a more clearer understanding of the user and his needs. To do so, I’ve used the Affinity Diagram and Empathy Map models.
Affinity Diagram
The gathered data from the User Interviews has been put into an Affinity Diagram, after which they were organised in thematic categories. My favorite insight that one of the participants said was:
“We should do Design Thinking on ourselves”
Empathy Map
An Empathy Map provides an overview of a person’s experience, by focusing on four key traits, which are what the user Says, Thinks, Does and Feels. Also, the Empathy Map will be a good starting point for creating the Personas.
Persona
Simply put, a Persona is the representation of your ideal user. It is highly recommended that you create a persona, so that you may have a clear understanding of who you are designing for. Emphasis should be put on the persona’s story, her goals and motivation.
For this project, our main persona will be Andreea, a highly-efficient designer working in a large-scale digital agency.
Journey Map
The User Journey Map is basically an overview of the user’s interaction with a product. It helps gain insights and better understand the user’s pain points and expectations in all phases of the experience. It will also be a valuable asset in further phases of the Design Thinking methodology, when ideas of improving the experience will be thought in each phase of the interaction.
Challenges
After analysing the user research, I found that there were three main pain-points that kept repeating during the interviews: the lack of time, the lack of energy, and the lack of planning. Even though users generally know what they’d like to accomplish, the fact that they don’t have a structured plan blocks them from making the first steps. Plus, add to this the feeling of coming home tired from work with just a few hours left in the day, and you start to feel how hard it is to do something towards achieving your goals.
Next Step
In the next phase of the Design Thinking methodology, which is the Define phase, I’ll be defining the problem which I am trying to address, so that I may use it as a guide for the solution I am trying to design.
I hope you enjoyed my post. Till next Friday!
