Solving Design Problems with Empathy

Acting in the creative process

To me, acting is empathy training that allows us to feel what it’s like to be someone else. Taking on someone else’s experience can fundamentally change how we feel, how we think and how we engage with others in this world. As experience design professionals we can use acting techniques to make our designs more human and empathic. This article discusses when and how acting workshops support the design process, what acting theories might be useful, how the theories apply in practice and how stakeholders might buy-in.

“You can kill the King without a sword, and you can light the fire without a match. What needs to burn is your imagination.” — Konstantin Stanislavski

1. When and how are acting workshops useful?

The double diamond process as introduced by the design council is a great starting point to understand where acting workshops might fit in. To design an acting workshop I recommend to adopt an iterative research practice, such as action research.

1.1 The Double Diamond Process

The double diamond process maps design techniques into four stages: discover, define, develop, and deliver. The discover stage is to widen the perspective and generate a range of ideas and influences; The define stage is to narrow down the ideas into a vision; The develop stage is to widen conceptual ideas from the vision; The deliver stage is to finalise the project and gather feedback.

Acting workshops are most beneficial between discover and define stages (see illustration 1.1 below). Within this context acting workshops are complementary activities which enrich and inform the knowledge about the people involved in a project. They cannot replace general experience design activities (i.e. ideation, co-creation, user research, etc.), but they can expand our knowledge on motivations when there is very little known about the user. Because the key ingredients are imagination and creativity it is crucial to work from a methodology such as the double diamond and adopt a solid research practice.

1.2 Action Research

Working with the double diamond process and planning an acting workshop can be challenging when there is little experience with the subject. Action research is a reflective and iterative approach (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 306) to solve problems (see illustration 1.2) and helps you to fail fast so you can learn and alter your process. For example, if you plan an acting workshop for the first time you could start with a very small workshop of two to three people. You plan a few activities, run your workshop, observe what is going on, reflect on your learnings and this informs your next workshop with altered activities and more participants. The more you experience in small experiments how acting can help you to enhance your creative process, the better you will be able to work with acting techniques at the right time for the right projects.

2. What drama theories should I be aware of?

Konstantin Stanislavski system, Katie Mitchell’s theory on directing, devised theatre and improvisation will help you to work with empathy in the creative process.

2.1 Konstantin Stanislavski

Stanislavski (1863–1938) has revolutionised the world of theatre and his theory is taught in drama schools. Many contemporary approaches such as the widely known method acting can be traced back to him. Stanislavski’s system is a coherent, systematic and logical working method (Benedetti, 2008, p. IX) and enables actors to break their roles down into psychological needs. Actors usually discover during the rehearsals process what their characters want within a small unit, a scene, the whole play and beyond. The play itself is broken down into scenes and the scenes are broken down into units. Stanislavski’s system seems like an agile and lean UX method for actors. Especially the way user stories are formulated are how actors would talk about their character: “as [my character], I want to [motivation]”. Understanding Stanislavski’s system helps the empathy process by breaking down stories and ideas into systematic structures (see illustration 2.1).

2.2 Katie Mitchell

Katie Mitchell is an English theatre director and offers a rich source of practical advice in directing. Her techniques are derived from Stanislavski’s system and she breaks down units of a play by changes in motivations (2009, p. 56). In a workshop exploring changes in motivations can support the empathy process.

2.3 Devised Theatre and Improvisation

In addition to Stanislavski and Mitchell I recommend to look into devised theatre and improvisation. Devised theatre is a collaborative approach of a group of people to explore and experiment with ideas, images, concepts, themes, or stimuli that might include music, text, objects, paintings, or movement (Oddey, 2003, p. 1). There is a lot of experimentation and playfulness. The story emerges through what is brought by the cast into the rehearsal room. Improvisation is the process of creating a story in the present moment (Abbott, 2007, p. 7). Combined with devised theatre both techniques offer a great creative ground to experiment with ideas.

“You can kill the King without a sword, and you can light the fire without a match. What needs to burn is your imagination.” — Konstantin Stanislavski

3. How do I apply the theory in practice?

Imagine acting workshops as a brainstorming session. You start with warm-ups, you explain the rules, the group create ideas, present it to each other, devises their ideas and you wrap-up everything at the end.

For one of my clients I worked on a service design project which was in early discovery stage approaching the transition into define stage on the double diamond. The project team worked from an action research approach by planning their activities (plan), running the workshop (act), collating insights (observe), and reflecting on the experience (reflect).

Case example: A telecommunication operator’s design research question revolved around how their service can become more customer centric in its retail and support functions. Among the range of research methods the team has set up a three day acting workshop.

The workshop evolved from small experiments and the design team collaborated with an acting coach to design the activities. They prepared and ran small trials with volunteers, learnt from the experiments, and eventually structured the three days workshop.

The audition process became an important part for the team as they experienced the first time how professional actors work. Over two days they auditioned actors in pairs and invited them to improvise a scene using John Abbott’s improvisation cards.

Six actors were selected from the auditions and another six professionals were recruited from teams within the telecom operations.

In the workshops the group spent a third of the time in warm-ups, attunement and trust-exercises. The rest of the time the group explored the customer engagement with different techniques, such as devising and improvisation.

Understanding how it might feels for customers to engage with new services enabled the project team to empathise with their customers. The workshop created a seed for a new service idea, which the design team developed into customer centric design solutions. The opportunities, challenges and risks explored fed into the overall research and informed the design vision.

Full case study available here.

3.1 Plan

Planning the activities involve thinking about practicalities such as location, working with professional actors and legal requirements.

The workshop is ideally held in an environment where it’s ok to be loud. In an office environment it might cause stress to hear people expressing strong emotions or running around. Drama schools usually rent out their rehearsal spaces, which is a great alternative to a corporate environment.

Tips for working with professional actors:

If you work with professional actors, organising auditions can be a challenging, administrative act. However, because actors go through a rigorous training they can easily relate to strangers and be in the present moment. This can help non actors to step out of their comfort zones, take risks and be creative.

Katie Mitchell offers some useful advice for auditions, including:

• Ask them about their work.
• Ask them to improvise and set them simple tasks to do.
• Have a third person in the audition to interact with the actor.
• Listen to your hunches.
• If you have doubts, ring directors the actor has worked with previously. (2009, p. 102)

Clarify with a lawyer how to handle non-disclosure agreements and rights on filmed material of your actors. Think about how you want to pay your actors and organise payments in advance so you can pay them once the workshop is done.

3.3 Act

The workshop is the actual fun part. Even if it is tempting to save time, don’t skip warm-ups as they are important to connect the group members with each other. John Wright has created with “Why is that so funny?” a great collection of exercises and warm-ups. Also don’t be afraid of conflict and arguing, because that’s part of the creative process. Even if the group isn’t able to find a consensus about an idea, what may help is to break up into smaller groups, explore different ideas and show it to each other. This often enables the group to move out of the conflict and generate richer ideas.

3.3 Observe

Generating insights is easier when you have some form of documentation from the workshop. Anything that helps to reconstruct what happened: Video, post-it notes and classic design tools (i.e. storyboards, experience maps, affinity and motivation diagrams) are useful to observe and document the workshop. It might be also useful to take up some of the workshop time to organise the generated data, as it will make the insights processing easier.

3.4 Reflect

Allow time for group process where workshop participants reflect on their experience. Organise your insights as you would after a regular design workshop. Ask yourself how your insights might influences all your other design activities.

4. Yay great, how do I convince my colleagues, clients, stakeholders?

There is no single recipe for success and therefore it is crucial to adopt an iterative approach from small experiments to a full three day workshop. It will only work if you have buy-in from your environment. You are asking your colleagues, clients and stakeholder to try something new. They are more likely to agree if they can experience small successes which enhance the creative process. Once you gained buy-in keep the experience fun and maintain enthusiasm. It is also important to understand the nature and the context of your project. For example, when your project is quite advanced you may need to consider other methodologies.

5. What can I conclude from all of this?

Acting workshops can be very powerful when used at the right time for the right project by enabling project teams to experience what it’s like to be the customer. They are one tool in a UX repertoire and need other tools and methodologies to be fully effective. Acting workshops can be fun and they are also hard work at the same time. Small experiments help to find the right activities. If you have a personal interest in this subject you will find your own approach, your own theory, and your own way of doing. I hope this article will spark off creative workshops in your organisations that will help you to solve design problems with empathy.

“Create your own method. Don’t depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.” — Konstantin Stanislavski

References

• Abbott, J., 2007. The improvisation book. Nick Hern Books, London
• Benedetti, J., 2008. Stanislavski — An Introduction. Methuen Drama, London (First published 1982)
• Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K., 2007. Research Methods in Education. Routledge. Routledge, Oxon
• Mitchell, K., 2009. The Director’s Craft: : A handbook for the Theatre. Routledge, Oxon
• Oddey, A., 1994. Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. Routledge. Routledge, London
• Wright, J., 2006. Why is that so funny?. Nick Hern Books, London