USER RESEARCH METHODS

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Empathy Mapping

Articulate the shared understanding of the user.

Identify your target users key traits, values, goals and pain points; what they think, say, do and feel; their experiences and expectations. By the end of this mapping you will be able to arrive at a very detailed picture of who your users really are and what they really need, in every aspect of the product or service you offer. The more effective your analysis, the less time you spend on design iteration.

👤 PERSONA ANALYSIS

A Persona is a fictitious character representing the reliable and realistic traits and behaviours, backgrounds, goals and values, of your target audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them.

The goal of personas is not to represent all audiences or address all needs, but rather represent a major user group and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups. Personas enable the design team to stand in their users' shoes, thus, focusing creative effort on satisfying users' needs rather than "pet" ideas of team members or senior executives.

By using Persona Analysis as one of the methods of research, the users' goals and needs remain in focus. A set of 3 to 4 Personas can be quickly developed to represent the needs of many users fitting the same criteria. This saves time in canvassing the whole user community to gather user requirements. Design effort can hence be prioritised and evaluated against such Personas, and experiments can be designed basis these Personas.

🗝️ STEPS

PROFILE THE PERSONA

Select a persona to represent an extreme user in the contextual spectrum of the product or service. Give the persona a title rather than a name. Once you have analyzed a few, you can give it a name and create a composite profile.

SPECIFY THE PERSONA’S GOALS

Think Professional, Personal, Social, Short and Long Term Aspirations - BUT in the context of the product or service you are designing. You can also add needs to achieve the goals.

SPECIFY THE PERSONA’S PAIN POINTS

Think Challenges to achieving Goals, Other frustrations, obstacles, stumbling Blocks, major and minor.

💯 TIPS

Writing the Persona

The intent is for the reader to leave feeling like they know this person a little bit more in the context of their research. Write a Persona to describe each extreme user and if needed persons impacted by the extreme user.

Persona Goals

Think Professional, Personal, Social, Short and Long Term Aspirations - BUT in the context of the product or service you are designing. You can also add needs to achieve the goals.

Persona Pain Points

Think Challenges to achieving Goals, other frustrations, obstacles, stumbling blocks, major and minor.

📋 EXAMPLE OF A PERSONA

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🔖 PRACTICE TEMPLATE

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PERSONA MAPPING TEMPLATE IN MURAL⁠

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[MURAL is a team collaboration tool; works best in Chrome; You can access the MURAL BOARD by signing in with a current MURAL account. If you don't have an account, you will be prompted to create a new one. Once you create your password, you will be able to access the mural/room or workspace you were invited to. It's that easy!]

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PERSONA MAPPING TEMPLATE IN PDF⁠

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💙 BUILD THE EMPATHY MAP

Empathy is the foundation of the design process. This requires you to gain a deep understanding of your target users context, complexities and start to solve problems from their perspectives.

To empathise we:

Observe: View users and their behaviours in the context of their lives.

Engage: Interact with and research users through both scheduled and short “intercept” encounters.

Immerse: Experience what your users experience.

Engaging with users directly reveals a tremendous amount about the way they think and the values they hold, which are sometimes not obvious to the people who hold them, themselves. A deep engagement can surprise both the designer and the user, by the unanticipated insights that are revealed. The stories that people tell and the things that say they do – even if they are different from what they actually do – are strong indicators of their deeply held beliefs about the way the world is.

Good designs are built on a solid understanding of those kinds of beliefs and values. An Empathy Map is the tool to help you synthesise your observations from across the various information gathering tools applied and draw out unexpected insights.

🗝️ STEPS

SAY

List some quotes, defining words your user said.

List user actions and behaviour you notice.

THINK

List thoughts you 'infer' your user was thinking (body language, tone, choice of words).

FEEL

List emotions you ‘infer’ your user was feeling (body language, tone, choice of words).

“NEEDS” are human emotional or physical necessities.

They are verbs (activities and desires which your user could use help with), not nouns (solutions). The stories that people tell and the things that people say they do, even if they are different from what they actually do, are strong indicators of their deeply held beliefs about the way the world is. They could derive from contradictions between two quadrants.

An “INSIGHT” is a remarkable realisation that you could leverage to better respond to a design challenge.

After plotting the user stories, their words, actions and feelings, start with asking yourself, “Why?” users do/behave in the way seen, the answer is the insight. One way to identify insights is to capture “tensions” and “contradictions” as you work. They could derive from contradictions within or between quadrants.

💯 TIPS

Thoughts(beliefs) and Feelings(emotions) cannot be directly observed. They must be “inferred” by paying careful attention to various clues such as, body language, tone, choice of words.

Identify Needs – “Needs” are human emotional or physical necessities. Remember, Needs are verbs (activities and desires which your user could use help with), not nouns (solutions).

Insights often appear from contradictions between two user attributes (either within or between two different quadrants) or from asking yourself “Why?” when you notice strange behavior. One way to identify insights is to capture “tensions” and “contradictions” as you work.

😠 GUIDE TO ARTICULATE HUMAN EMOTIONS

We are mostly aware of the 6 basic emotions defined by American psychologists Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen. They identified six basic emotions based on studying the isolated culture of people from the Fori tribe in Papua New Guinea in 1972. Primarily Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness and Surprise, were identified by the tribe using pictures.

However, with great difficulty few are able to articulate the finer emotional nuances under these major categories.

A recent study in 2017, by Alan S. Cowen and Dacher Keltner, from the University of California, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA; certainly expands our vocabulary of emotions into 27 words.

1. Admiration

10. Confusion

19. Interest

2. Adoration

11. Craving

20. Joy

3. Aesthetic Appreciation

12. Disgust

21. Nostalgia

4. Amusement

13. Empathetic pain

22. Romance

5. Anxiety

14. Entrancement

23. Sadness

6. Awe

15. Envy

24. Satisfaction

7. Awkwardness

16. Excitement

25. Sexual Desire

8. Boredom

17. Fear

26. Sympathy

9. Calmness

18. Horror

27. Triumph

There are no rows in this table

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It is important to note that, any given event will not evoke only a one emotion. For example, hearing the song "Who let the dogs out" may result in a combination of different degrees of Amusement, Disgust and Horror.

If you have been reading this list carefully, you will notice that ANGER is not included. This is because Anger is a manifestation of fear - Fear of, losing one's reputation, losing a friend/spouse, looking stupid for not having a concrete answer or making a mistake.

Notably absent are HATE and RESENTMENT, these too being manifestations of other emotions.

Use this list to refine your observations of emotions displayed by the users in your research.

📋 EXAMPLE OF AN EMPATHY MAP

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🔖 PRACTICE TEMPLATE

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EMPATHY MAP TEMPLATE IN MURAL⁠

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EMPATHY MAP TEMPLATE IN PDF⁠

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📍 CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP

The Customer Journey Map (CJM) enables identifying the customer experience from beginning to end. This simple framework will help you to visualise the entire flow of an experience, whether it is how a service may work or all the touch-points of a customer’s journey with a product.

A journey map allows you to visualize a process or product in the hands of the customer from beginning to end. This simple framework will help you to more easily imagine the entire flow of an experience, whether it is how a service may work or all the touchpoints of a customer’s journey with a product. This does not need to be an in-depth, detailed representation, but rather a quick-and-dirty way of thinking out how an experience unfolds.

It also facilitates visualisation of a customers relationship with a product/brand over time and across different channels.

One could use this framework for both analysis of an existing journey as well as designing a future journey.

🗝️ STEPS

PUT YOURSELF IN THE SHOES OF YOUR PERSONA.

List the jobs or outcomes your customer is trying to achieve.

DEFINE THE MACRO LEVEL STAGES IN YOUR PERSONA’S JOURNEY.

Break the customers experience into stages/touch points throughout their experience journey.

DESCRIBE WHAT YOUR CUSTOMER IS DOING IN EACH STAGE.

For each stage/touch point, list activities and actions customers "DO"

SIMILARLY SPECIFY THEIR EXPERIENCE, IN TERMS OF WHAT THEY SAY, THINK AND FEEL IN EACH STAGE

For each stage/touch point, in their journey, identify specific joys/pains they are experiencing.

NOW OBSERVE WHAT INSIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES STARE AT YOU FROM THE CJM

Capture your insights and opportunities, stage-wise across the entire journey.

💯 TIPS

Before you dive into creating your map, you need to ask yourself why you are making one in the first place. What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it specifically about? What experience is it based upon?

You really need to get into the shoes of your persona and understand their emotions. Every action your customer takes is motivated by an emotion. And your customer’s emotions will change depending on where they are in their journey with your product or service. Tracking the emotional state of your user as he/she moves through the process or product journey via a simple graph helps you identify the most painful and rewarding moments of their experience.

Breaking down the customer journey phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touch-points accordingly are essential steps towards maximising customer success. After all, everything you do should be about solving customer problems and helping them achieve long-term success with your product or service.

The journey map should neither be too broad or too narrow – find a balance wherein you cut out the unimportant details and keep the actionable aspects.

Lastly add the MOT – Moments of Truth – those stages where your customer is most likely to stay to the very end of the experience or walk away from the experience.