Stanford d. School
AK12DC teams began the process of developing empathy through reflection and development of an empathetic mindset. Team members considered and discussed what it feels like to “put myself on the shelf” by adopting a mindset without judgment, with a beginners eye, and with curiosity, optimism and respect.
In consultation with mentors, each team has planned a process for gaining empathy that they will implement over the next month. Although each plan is customized to the specific team and design challenge, every team will follow the same general steps.
Go where they are
Teams will develop empathy by going to their users rather than expecting their users to come to them. Team members will leave their own office or classroom and go to the environment of the user.
Watch and observe
Before team members ask questions or have conversations with users, they will learn by watching. Often, what people do is more enlightening than what they say. When we observe we ask ourselves:
- What is this person doing?
- How are they doing it?
- Why are they doing it this way?
After observation, teams will have conversations about their design challenge with users. Discussion guides will be developed and used as an outlines for conversations. it is also important to remember that often conversations take unexpected turns and so discussion guides are not scripts.
Findings from observations and interviews are documented by writing down specific quotes and observations. Design teams will work to resist the temptation to make judgments and jump to conclusions at this stage in the Design Thinking process!
Debrief with team
Finally, the whole design team will come back together to tell the stories of each user interviewed noting tensions, contradictions, surprises and insights. The full picture of the users begins to come to light as teams begin to unpack the meaning of their observations and interviews.
When AK12DC teams reconvene for the November summit they will use the information gathered to refine their design challenge by defining the real problem from the perspective of the users. Only then will it will then be possible to ideate and prototype possible solutions. For some, the Design Thinking process may seem counterintuitive because it seems natural and expedient to begin a problem solving process by creating solutions. In design thinking, however, we recognize that unless we gain empathy, it is unlikely understand the real problem.
Stay tuned to find out how AK12DC teams and design challenges refine and evolve as they learn more and move through the process!