Exploring the Why: The Art of the Empathy Interview Explained
By: Katie Caldwell and Ambur Wilkerson
As student journalists, we are taught to cover the 5 W’s and the H: who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Each part is a vital piece to a bigger puzzle which tells us a story. In our product development course, we are still taking those pieces into account — but focusing on the ‘why.’
Oh, you like spaghetti. Cool. Why? Because you like the meatballs. Okay, even cooler, but why?
Continuously asking ‘why’ allows you to dig deeper and find hidden layers behind a person’s decision making. ‘Why’ doesn’t have to be the only way to find out — why. Ask questions that reveal emotion and decision-making.
You can ask how someone ended up in their profession. Or you could try digging deeper by asking if they had done research on the position before applying for the job. Digging — is your main tool. This is where empathy interviews come into play and why it is the most vital part of developing a product.
Back in September, we as a class, conducted two practice empathy interviews with Chris Porter and Janelle Briggs. Porter is a guy with a the itch for connections. His outgoing personality and love for helping others steered him in a career of making connections for local start-ups. A big take-away from his interview was how important it is to talk to people face-to-face. Going to events and meeting up with others with similar interests will only benefit you in the long run and (hopefully) create lasting connections.
Janelle spoke similarly about making connections — but explained how hard it was for her to do so at first because of her being new to the area and having a more introverted personality. It was interesting comparing and contrasting the interviews based on their personality types — one extremely extroverted and one thrusted into the role of an extrovert.
To further explore what empathy interviews reveal, we conducted some of our own. We asked students to reveal how they felt about the journalism program at the University of Arizona as well as how they feel about courses that push through traditional journalistic barriers.
Lexi Richardson, a graduate student majoring in journalism, shared that the program did prepare students toward approaching the journalism workforce, but that “there’s always room for improvement.” Touching on improvement, in response to being asked about her thoughts on including more innovative courses, much like Michael McKisson’s product development course, Richardson said, “I think it is important to have more diverse multimedia-type classes because we are in an industry that is changing rapidly.”
One of the students in our product development course Griffin Riley, a junior majoring in both political science and journalism, touched on the possibility of providing students with funding for the equipment we need while pursuing journalism such as cameras and microphones.
“I don’t know how much could be done to make it happen. Maybe some kind of scholarship,” Riley said. When asked to describe his experience so far in the product development course in one word, Riley said “WAIT” due to the fact that we’re constantly being reminded not to “rush to a solution.”
David Martinez, a second year graduate student in the School of Journalism, said he liked the idea of having different types of courses to choose from — and that it is important to diversify your skills. “A lot of the classes we have to choose from now are basic reporting class — like media law — which is important but some of that might not be applicable if you’re trying to find a job,” Martinez said.
Rocky Baier, a junior majoring in journalism, is also in the product class and said she loves having different types of journalism classes. “I think that it builds different types of skills that I wouldn’t normally get elsewhere, as opposed to a lot of the other journalism classes where I can get all of that stuff by simply doing an internship or working at the wildcat,” she said.
