Don’t Confuse Empathy With

Sympathy
Difference Between Empathy and Sympathy
• Sympathy is about your ability to show concern for the well-
being of another, but does not necessarily require you to
experience what others do

• sympathy often involves a sense of detachment and

superiority; when we sympathize, we tend to project feelings
of pity and sorrow onto another person.

• In design thinking, your goal is to understand the people for

whom you design, not react to their current predicament in
an emotional way.
 “Well, as a user, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Our users aren’t going to worry about that.”

“It’s my project. I know what users think.”

THESE ARE STATEMENTS DESIGN THINKERS DO NOT

MAKE!!
Successful Design Thinking
GE Healthcare
• GE Healthcare Diagnostic imaging has revolutionized healthcare, with
GE Healthcare coming up with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
machines more child-friendly.
Airbnb
• How the famed start-up went from $200 a
week profit to the “unicorn” it is today.

• Joe a Design thinking student is a part of

Airbnb’s success; in particular, they built a
culture of experimentation: They lived the
experience!

• Clicked pics differently-replace the amateur

photography with beautiful high-resolution
pictures
 STORY OF A DESIGN FAIL DUE TO LACK OF
EMPATHY – Google Glass 2013
• Google Glass put cameras in public
before people were ready

• The key problems revolved around the

cost and issues about privacy

• Apple's approach with the Vision Pro

appears to be more focused and
calculated. Unlike Google, Apple tends to
press forward with products and refine
them over generations.
What went wrong in empathy?

Google Glass failed because… They didn’t ask the right questions:

How will users feel wearing this in public?

How much would one pay for this?

How would it make others around feel?

Oral B
• Oral B wanted to upgrade its electric
toothbrush. The designers identified
pain points related to charging and
brush head replacement and
developed solutions that addressed
these specific needs.
Result:
• The new Oral-B electric toothbrush
featured USB charging and a
smartphone app that could send
reminders to order new brush heads,
leading to a more convenient and less
stressful brushing experience for users.
 Netflix The
“Because
you
• Although many companies have successfully watched”
used design thinking, Netflix has repeatedly feature
leveraged it to become an industry giant.

• Teams were encouraged to look for new

opportunities to delight customers, drive
engagement and generate new revenue.

• The approach? Empathize with

auto-play
customers,unearth pain points and find their trailers
unaddressed needs.
“CHANGE HAPPENS PRETTY FAST, IF YOU
DON’T STOP AND LOOK AROUND ONCE IN
A WHILE, YOU COULD MISS IT.”
 Empathy Phase
A Cognitive Model for User Comprehension
A Step-by-step Guide Along With Tools And
Methodologies To Help You Navigate The Empathy
Phase
• Step 1: Define Your Focus
• Clearly define the problem or challenge you want to address in the
Organization.
• For Eg. it could be improving the customer experience in digital banking or creating a
more inclusive product.

• Step 2: Assemble a Diverse Team

• Gather a cross-functional team with diverse backgrounds and skills, including
designers, researchers, and stakeholders from the industry.
A Step-by-step Guide Along With Tools And
Methodologies To Help You Navigate The Empathy
Phase
• Step 3: Conduct Stakeholder Interviews
• Tools: Interview guide, empathy map

• Identify key stakeholders: Interview a diverse set of stakeholders, including

customers, employees, and decision-makers in the organisations.

• Use open-ended questions: Ask questions that encourage storytelling and

uncover emotions related to their experiences.

• Create empathy maps: Use empathy maps to visualize and synthesize key
findings, including thoughts, feelings, actions, and pain points.
 A Step-by-step Guide Along With Tools And
Methodologies To Help You Navigate The Empathy
Phase
• Step 4: Develop Personas
• Tools: Persona templates
• Segment your audience: Based on the insights gathered, create personas that
represent different user segments within the organization space.
• Humanize personas: Include details such as demographics, behaviors, goals, and pain
points to make the personas relatable.

• Step 5: Conduct Observations

• Tools: Observation checklist, field notes
• Observe in context: Witness users' interactions with the products or services in their
natural environment.
• Take field notes: Record observations, paying attention to patterns, behaviors, and
pain points.
 A Step-by-step Guide Along With Tools And
Methodologies To Help You Navigate The Empathy
Phase
• Step 6: Empathy in Action
• Tools: Empathy exercises, role-playing
• Team empathy exercises: Encourage team members to share and reflect on
their own experiences related to the challenge.
• Role-playing: Act out scenarios based on user interviews and observations to
deepen understanding.
What is an Empathy Map?
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we
know about a particular type of user.
It externalizes knowledge about users in order to:
✓A heuristic device capturing a user’s explicit verbalizations , internal cognition
, observable behaviors , and affective states .
✓Facilitates team alignment via shared phenomenological understanding.
✓ Encourages collaborative, user-centered inquiry.

They can help UX professionals understand what aspects of their user they know and
where they would need to gather more user data.
• The Says quadrant
contains what the user
says out loud in an
interview or some other
usability study.
• It contains verbatim and
direct quotes from
research.
• “I want something
reliable.”
• “I had a bad experience.”
• The Thinks quadrant
captures what the user is
thinking throughout the
experience.
• May not be willing to
vocalize
• Try to understand why they
are reluctant to share are
they unsure, self-conscious,
polite, or afraid to tell
others something?
• The Does quadrant
encloses the actions the
user takes.
• From the research, what
does the user physically
do?
• How does the user go
about doing it?
• Refreshes page several
times.
• Shops around to compare
prices.
• The Feels quadrant is the
user’s emotional state,
often represented as an
adjective plus a short
sentence for context.
• Ask yourself:
• what worries the user?
• What does the user get
excited about?
• How does the user feel
about the experience?
Process: How to Build an Empathy Map
1. Define scope and goals
a. What user or persona will you map? Will you map a persona or an
individual user? Always start with a 1:1 mapping (1 user/persona per
empathy map). This means that, if you have multiple personas, there
should be an empathy map for each.
b. Define your primary purpose for empathy mapping. Is it to align
the team on your user? If so, be sure everyone is present during the
empathy-mapping activity. Is it to analyze an interview transcript? If so,
set a clear scope and timebox your effort to ensure you have time to
map multiple user interviews.
2. Gather materials
• Your purpose should dictate
the medium you use to
create an empathy map. If
you will be working with an
entire team, have a large
whiteboard, sticky notes,
and markers readily
available.
• If empathy mapping alone,
create a system that works
for you. The easier to share
out with the rest of the
team, the better.
3. Collect research
• Gather the research you will be
using to fuel your empathy map.
Empathy mapping is a qualitative
method, so you will need
qualitative inputs: user
interviews, field studies, diary
studies, listening sessions,
or qualitative surveys.
4. Individually generate sticky notes
for each quadrant
• Once you have research inputs, you
can proceed to mapping as a team.
In the beginning, everybody should
read through the research
individually. As each team member
digests the data, they can fill out
sticky notes that align to the four
quadrants. Next, team members
can add their notes to the map on
the whiteboard.
5. Converge to cluster and synthesize
• In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board
collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same
quadrant. Name your clusters with themes that represent each group
(for example, “validation from others” or “research”). Repeat themes
in each quadrant if necessary. The activity of clustering facilitates
discussion and alignment — the goal being to arrive at a shared
understanding of your user by all team members.
• Once your empathy map is clustered, you can begin to vocalize and
align as a team on your findings. What outliers (or data points that
did not fit in any cluster) are there? What themes were repeated in
all the quadrants? What themes only exist in one quadrant? What
gaps exist in our understanding?
6. Polish and plan
• If you feel that you need more detail or you have unique needs, adapt
the map by including additional quadrants or by increasing specificity
to existing quadrants.
• Depending on the purpose of your empathy map, polish and digitize
the output accordingly.
• Be sure to include the user, any outstanding questions, the date and
version number. Plan to circle back to the empathy map as more
research is gathered or to guide UX decisions.
How does An Empathy Map Help?
• Remove bias from our designs and align the team on a single, shared
understanding of the user
• Discover weaknesses in our research
• Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not even be aware
of
• Understand what drives users’ behaviors
• Guide us towards meaningful innovation
Activity
Create an Empathy Map for your topic

Eg. Interview your classmates for 10 minutes about a problem they face
in online learning. Then, together, fill out an empathy map

Use sticky notes on a wall or Miro for a real DT experience.

Debrief

• “What surprised you?”

• “What assumption did you make that turned out to be wrong?”

• “If this were your real client, what would be your next step?”
Persona Map
Deep Profiling of Target Users
What is a Persona Map?
• Customers are defined by key characteristics they share, leading to a
central user persona that serves as a guiding light for product design

• Several persona maps are created as a means of representing

different segments of the user base within the target market

• These profiles reflect the audience’s characteristics such as personal

attributes, behavior, motivations, and values.
• Persona development is key to understanding your customer and
developing long-term customer relationships.

• Customers will remember HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

• Understanding their perspective and how they is a great first step to

creating products and services that fit their needs.
Persona Map
I am organizing a party
As the host, you need to know where the venue will be, what type of
theme to decorate with, and how many people to feed – among other
things. How will you obtain this information? By understanding who
the party is really for!
How does Creating Personas help?
• Persona mapping helps you understand where to focus your time and
resources.
• Having personas will improve conversions.
• Persona mapping allows you to walk in your customers’ shoes.
• Mapping out personas helps your product development.
• Personas allow for highly targeted marketing campaigns.
• Deliver a better online presence with personas.
Create Your Own Persona Maps
• Step 1: Give your persona a name and a face
Giving your persona a name and a face will help you to humanize them
and make them feel more real. Choose a name that reflects their
personality or their role within your target audience. You can also find or
create an image that represents your persona.

• Step 2: Write down their demographics

What's their age, gender, occupation, education level, etc.? Knowing this
information will help you to understand how they might interact with
your product or service.
Create Your Own Persona Maps
• Step 3: Write down their motivations
What are their goals and needs? What motivates them? Understanding
what they want to achieve will help you to design a better user
experience for them.

• Step 4: Write down their frustrations

What are their pain points? What are the things that frustrate them or
cause them difficulty? Addressing these issues will improve their
experience with your product or service.
Create Your Own Persona Maps

• Step 5: Repeat this process to create multiple user personas

Create multiple user personas to represent different segments of your
target audience. This will ensure that you cater to the needs of as many
people as possible. Once you've created multiple personas, separate your
user personas into Primary and Secondary categories.
Follow the steps and Create User Personas

https://www.uxtweak.com/user-personas/creation/
User Journey Mapping
•Visualizes the steps a user takes in a process or experience.
•Helps identify pain points, emotions, and opportunities at each
stage of the Journey.
What Will You Take Forward?

• One insight that changed your thinking today

• One feeling you connected with

• One action you’ll take to observe empathy in the real world

• (Optional) Observe a person doing a task and sketch an empathy

map

Thank you for participating with heart and curiosity!