Empathizing: first breakthrough

“Something’s wrong.” That thought kept popping into my head, putting into words the weird feeling I had in my stomach, and the sudden need to cough. And then again: “Something’s wrong.”

I could not ignore it, so I went again and again over the interview notes. Our mission was to find out how this student was approaching the “get a job” process, and our initial conclusion was:

This person needs a relaxed, fun, entertaining environment.

Looking back at the conversation we had, that conclusion seemed obvious. After all, he used “fun” and “relaxed” in almost every positive sentence. He used “tense”, “not fun”, “not relaxed”, in every negative evaluation. All the “why?” where answered with “because I like a fun/ relaxed atmosphere”.

So we were about to go ahead and brainstorm ways to provide a fun, relaxing experience. But I still had this feeling that something was not right, that we were on the wrong path.

But how could that be? We did everything by the book:

• listened attentively (and it worked: our interviewee kept talking);
• staid in the realm of “what happened in reality, to this person”; we asked about their past and present experience, asked for details and stories (and it worked: topics that seemed exhausted in one sentence, proved to give juicy insights when we asked for more details);
• asked open ended questions (and it worked, we got a lot of insight about how our interviewee approached their task, what he liked and what not, how did he approach all the aspects);
• Asked “why?”/”who come” multiple times (and it worked, we got from statements coming from a rather superficial/specific realm, to deeper needs and feelings).

So I kept going through the transcripts, looking at the Persona we had sketched (Alex Relax was the name), remembering the interview and trying to find out why I was so uncomfortable with our conclusion. What was wrong? What was missing? I felt like a detective facing a great mystery.

And then, I suddenly remembered that, while our interviewee seemed calm and relaxed, and he was talking only about relaxation and fun… his legs were restless. He was wiggling his feet.

In fact, he started wiggling his feet as soon as we moved from “let’s get to know each other” to “so, what about your experience with getting a job”. And he kept wiggling his feet (and, at some point, shaking the table as well) throughout the entire interview, all the way to “thank you”.

My thoughts started to spiral with ever increasing speed: you cannot be relaxed AND shake feet, table and everything around you, at the same time.. so: he WAS wiggling, therefore not relaxed.. BUT he was talking about fun and relaxation.. why, what’s the catch… and then:

He wanted relaxation because he did not have it.

He wanted a fun and relaxed atmosphere because he was stressed, unsure, and possibly afraid.

He wanted relaxation because adding external stress would have been too much to bear.

From there on, things unfolded with ease. The workshop advanced to the problem definition stage (“we need to design a hiring process that would provide reassurance and transparency, help the candidate find out where they stand and what’s going on”), to the ideation stage (which I loved, multiple stages on guided idea generation, created individually and then shared with the team) and then to the prototype stage.

The prototype stage was a challenge, since we had a ridiculously short amount of time (half an hour, if I remember correctly) to give our idea a shape that could be understood by others. I remember my anxiety: did I get it right? was it really about feeling safe? wasn’t I exaggerating? what if it was actually about fun, relax?

The advantage of the close upcoming deadline was that there was not enough time to be anxious and build the prototype at the same time; so we sketched and glued and moved pieces around and, low and behold, when the time was up, we had something. We were not proud of it, but it got the point across.

As our “Alex relax” came in, my team mates were explaining our proposal, I was taking notes, and I could not believe it that we will have feedback so fast. My heart was pounding. And soon after, I heard him say the magic phrase: “yes, that’s good, that would make me fill safer”. Soon after, he politely discarded the fun parts that we had in added to the prototype: “maybe others would like that”.

There’s only one word to describe that feeling:

And the wonderful thing is that I went to this workshop wishing to work on the empathy part, to get past my conviction that “I don’t get people”, “I cannot understand what people need”.. and it happened. I did it. I got pas the surface layer. Amazing.

Events described above happened during the hands-on Design Thinking workshop by DesignThinkingSociety