Empathizing with your audience
In our latest project, we’re focusing on designing new physical computing “paradigms” that encourage social and collaborative communication among middle and high school teenagers. Through our designs, we hope to envision a society in which technology facilitates more meaningful exchanges with people rather than solitary interactions with keyboards and computer screens.
The first phase of our project has been focused on ethnographic research — really getting into the hearts and minds of our audience. We’ve hung out at high school football games, conducted phone interviews, and approached groups of teenagers at their favorite hangout spots to start to get a sense for what makes them tick. Throughout this process, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to truly empathize with a group of people. I’ve also been mulling over the differences between “design research” and “market research” that we discussed in class. More specifically, I’ve been comparing the type of research conducted as part of Microsoft’s design process to what we’ve been doing over the last week.
My main insight, though it may seem like common sense, is that it’s nearly impossible to empathize with a group of people based purely on second hand information. Since Microsoft is a larger company, there’s a set of product planners tasked with conducting research on a given segment of the market to understand their needs and perceptions. This usually consists of 1:1 interviews as well as quantitative research in the form of large scale surveys. On my most recent project at Microsoft, we were able to extend this research to international markets which provided a wealth of valuable knowledge. The problem, however, is that someone else’s insights aren’t nearly as personal as your own. It’s easy to misunderstand the relative importance of what was learned, to discount observations, and to generally misinterpret the research. It’s not done on purpose, but without a personal connection to the people for whom you’re designing, you’re not able to mentally put yourself in their shoes. There’s a world of difference between doing your own research and having someone else tell you about theirs.
Looking back, I’m realizing that I would have benefited from taking more risks in conducting research for my projects at Microsoft. It’s easy to assume at a large organization that there’s a set way of doing things and that someone else is responsible for a given part of the process. However, I’m realizing I would have gotten a ton out of stopping people on the street to ask about how they use email, going to internet cafes to observe internet usage, and talking to younger people even though they may be outside of the target audience because in reality they constitute the future. It may seem ad hoc and informal for a large organization, but it’s undeniably useful. The personal nature of that kind of research and the associated inspirations are hard to replace with second hand findings. You may hear the words, but you can’t really internalize the meaning behind them.
Given the structure of typical engineering organizations, I wonder how research can be made more personal and how design inspiration can be defended based on qualitative research methods rather than the quantitative ones employed today. From my experience, it seems like those types of organizations expect the average trend to drive innovation rather than looking for inspiration in the trendsetters or the idiosyncracies of unique usage. How do you justify radical innovation based on the mental models of a quantitatively insignificant set of people? How do you convince a management team of the value of design inspiration? And how do you facilitate a personal connection between each individual in an organization and their customers? These aren’t questions I have the answer to yet, but ones I believe are fundamental to the creation of innovative organizations. I’m sure I’ll continue to ponder them throughout my work here.
Leave a Reply