This clip introduces six Design Mindsets and explains how you can use each one to spark collaborative approaches to complex challenges.
To find out more about how to upskill your leaders in leading collaborative design or for support with your next co-design project, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.
In this clip you’ll learn what co-design is, who can be involved, and how to structure a co-design initiative for best results.
To find out more about how to upskill your leaders in leading collaborative design or for support with your next co-design project, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.
Empathy mapping is a visual tool that helps build shared understanding around stakeholders’ activities, aspirations and frustrations concerning a particular situation or issue. It is helpful in the discovery phase of a collaborative design project as it helps build empathy across the various stakeholder groups involved. At the same time, participants surface and synthesise vital insights, which can inform the subsequent design approach.
1. Introduce the process: Explain the empathy mapping process to your team and provide the necessary materials, such as empathy map templates, sticky notes, and markers. Encourage your team to approach the process with an open mind and a willingness to understand the stakeholders’ perspectives.
2. Surface the personas: Provide participants with a persona to focus on. Explain that a persona is a character sketch that acts as a rough approximation of a population segment you are designing for. Work with the group to create some personas filling in basic demographics such as name, role, age, background etc.
3. Fill in the template: Invite participants to imagine what life might be like for our allocated persona relating to the topic. Have them work through the template’s questions, capture their ideas on sticky notes, and place them in the appropriate section of the empathy map.
Tasks – Consider the main activities that take up your personas’ time, energy and focus. What kinds of things are they working on getting done? These can be directly related to the focus question or be more broadly related to their life in general.
Aspirations – Consider all the reasons why your persona would want to engage with the provision. What would they be hoping to get out of it? What do they generally want from their lives more broadly? What is most important to them?
Frustrations – Consider the things that get in their way as they do their tasks. What obstacles do they hit? What pain do they feel? What situations cause them the most stress and anxiety?
4. Create user stories: Once groups have captured a bunch of tasks, aspirations and frustrations, invite them to summarise their insights. Have them create a couple of user stories by filling in the blanks in the following sentence: As a [persona type], I want to [task] because [aspiration], but [frustration].
5. Debrief and synthesise insights: Once your team has completed the empathy mapping process for all personas, share the user stories, debrief and synthesise the insights. Look for common themes and patterns, and use these insights to inform your design approach.
Empathy mapping is a powerful tool to inform your design approach. Consider how you can address your stakeholders’ needs, emotions, and behaviours in your design solution. Use the empathy maps as a reference throughout the design process to ensure your solution remains user-centred.
Click here for an Empathy Map template.
To find out more about how to up skill your leaders in leading collaborative design or for support with your next codesign project, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
