Module 2 Understand and Empathize
Connect
The video linked below is not intended to bring tears to your eyes, though it very well might. For our purposes, though, it is very helpful for getting us to think about the importance of empathy in design (and beyond).
The video was produced by the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic hospital, and encourages the viewer to put themselves into the shoes of the clinic’s patients. After watching the video, ask yourself: how can you better empathize with your users/customers? What about for creating products and services for internal use at your organization? Can empathy be a tool in the Design Thinking process? Keep your thoughts on these questions in mind as you work through the module, since we will come back to this video in the Practice activity at the end.
Empathy(hyperlink opens in a new tab) (4 min)
Content
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
• explain the importance of empathy for discovering underlying user requirements, including pain points and unmet needs,
• identify and compare a range of research methods,
• gather effective qualitative and quantitative data, and
• create or review different types of journey maps.
Starting with Empathy
Design Thinking is rooted, first and foremost, in empathy as it relates to developing a deep understanding of those you are designing for. Only by empathizing with your users/customers will it be possible to uncover their pain points or unmet needs—and thereby prepare yourself to design products/services/solutions that better align to those needs.
Throughout this module, you will be introduced to a variety of tools and practices to help you develop this sense of empathy, using a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Study
As you read through the chapter from the course textbook, take some time to reflect on how you have used empathy in the past to better understand a particular problem, whether in your personal or professional life. In the next section, we will dive into specific methodologies for applying an empathic mindset to solving problems.
