Practicing the Loop: Reflect

Overview

After you have collected user experience information in the "Observe" stage, it's important to: reflect on what you discovered, continue to build an understanding of, and sense of empathy with, your users, and then define the problem. There are several tools available to help you organize your data and reflect on the user experience. Not all of them are required for your design thinking process.

In this module, we will explore the following four tools, two of which your team will complete and submit as part of your module deliverable. These tools will be summarized at the end of this page for your reference.

To continue, scroll down or click the links to navigate to each section.

• Empathy Mapping
• Persona Development
• Stakeholder Mapping
• As-Is Scenario Mapping
• Summary of Reflection Tools

Empathy Mapping

What is empathy?

Empathy happens when we identify with and understand another person's situation, feelings, thoughts, and experiences. It's an effort to really connect with the user and deeply understand their point of view.

What is an empathy map?

• It is a research artifact that is generated from talking to real users.
• It is often used to gather results from an interview.
• It is a quick way of capturing user insights and observations.

Empathy maps reflect what a person is saying, thinking, doing, and feeling about their experience.

The left side of the empathy map is observable, whereas the right side is inferred. Often, empathy maps are created using pen, paper, and sticky notes, although online tools are also available.

Explore the image below for an example of what may be contained within an empathy map.

When creating an empathy map, put yourself in your user's shoes in the context of your challenge.

• What do they need to do in this context?
• What pressures are they under?
• What emotions might they be feeling?

Label any "sticky notes" that are unknowns (assumptions or questions) for later inquiry.

Your SI Challenge Empathy Map

Your empathy map gives you a much deeper understanding of the experiences of your users. As a part of your SI Challenge deliverable for this module, you will complete an empathy map with your team. This will help you deeply consider users' experiences, challenges, and hopes for what your SI Challenge might resolve. Check out the activity below to build your understanding of this important design thinking tool.

Activity: Celia's Empathy Map

While volunteering at the IMAGINE Clinic associated with the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy this summer, Celia was tasked with exploring different approaches to managing hospital appointments. Her supervisor was interested in understanding the implications of implementing an automated recommendation system to determine whether a patient requires an appointment. Celia decided to use an empathy map in order to better understand the patient experience when booking appointments. Celia completed multiple structured interviews with various patients, received consent to record their conversations, and transcribed her observations into an empathy map.

Instructions:

Drag and drop each observation into the relevant category, then click the blue "Check" button.

Persona Development

After you've collected your empathy maps, you can summarize the insights from them in a persona description which can then be used as a short-hand way of visualizing the user.

Personas can be helpful tools to guide the design thinking process. You will recall the personas that were introduced to you in our previous course; we used a similar process right here in ASIP!

Someone reading a persona description should feel like they're meeting the person and learning about a summary of the observations you've made through your user research. Persona development is used to summarize the combined insights from the observations and empathy map summaries, which in turn helps make them "real" for your team when considering their problems and solutions. The persona description should include what they do, say, think, and feel regarding your SI Challenge topic.

Although we won't ask you to develop a persona for your module deliverable, your team may find it helpful to do so as a part of your larger SI Challenge process. Additionally, you will be asked to complete a "profile" for your Universal Design assignment in the next module, and building a persona now may help you with your future deliverable.

Stakeholder Mapping

If the relationships the user has with others is important in your design challenge, then a stakeholder map is a key next step. The stakeholder map helps you understand all the different people involved in the user's experience and helps you anticipate how the challenge - and the solution - will impact these people and their relationships.

To make a stakeholder map, write down each stakeholder on a separate sticky note or square and then draw lines between the user and each stakeholder. Use different lines (e.g., different colours or dotted lines) to indicate positive and negative relationships. This allows you to understand the complexity of these relationships and how they interrelate.

Stakeholder maps can be a useful tool for design thinking, and we encourage you to use this tool if it is relevant to your SI Challenge. However, you will not be asked to submit a stakeholder map as part of your module deliverable. You will learn more about stakeholders in the Project Management module in PD4. If you’d like to better understand Stakeholder Mapping in the design thinking context, please review this IBM resource Links to an external site..

As-Is Scenario Mapping

As-is scenario mapping is an activity that is used to record the experience of the user as it currently is, without any solutions or interventions in place.

It's a way to capture the activities your user undertakes, the things they think about as they perform their tasks, and the feelings they encounter. It's a structured method that allows you to understand a user more deeply in order to craft a better experience for them in the future.

As-is scenarios are often created collaboratively using sticky notes, although there are virtual options available. To explore some of these tools, visit the Additional Resources: Online Tools for Design Thinking page, or scroll further down for specific tools related to this activity.

Below, you will find an image of an as-is scenario map. The top row is the "Steps" that the user goes through, and the columns below capture what they are doing (symbolized by a hand), thinking (symbolized by a thought bubble), and feeling (symbolized by picture of a heart) throughout their experience.

Create Your As-Is Scenario

Step 1: Fill out the first and last parts of the top row.

To create an as-is scenario with your team, start from the top down by considering the overall experience of the user related to the challenge you are seeking to solve. Write the initial motivation of the user and the final outcome of their experience.

For example, if you are seeking to improve user experience related to a refrigerator, your motivation might be "Decide to make dinner" and your final outcome might be "Serve meal." This will be the first and last notes of the top row - the beginning and end of the scenario.

Step 2: Fill in the gaps of the top row.

Next, fill in the steps that the user undergoes throughout their experience, one per square. Don't worry about what the "next step" is. Instead, keep writing ideas on sticky notes until you are comfortable with the level of detail of your scenario. Note that you don't have to capture every single experience or action!

In the refrigerator example, perhaps the steps are:

1. 1. Motivation: Decide to make dinner
   2. Decide on recipe
   3. Gather ingredients 
   4. Cook meal
   5. Garnish
   6. Get drinks for the meal
   7. Final outcome: Serve meal

Step 3: Fill in the columns.

Once you've agreed on the relevant steps/stages across the top, work as a team to fill in the individual tasks (doing), thoughts (thinking), and emotions (feeling) under each step until you've captured what a "day in the life" of a user really looks like. Find a way to indicate which notes are doing, thinking, and feeling - possibly by using a symbol or sticker, using different coloured sticky notes, or different shaped sticky notes.

In our refrigerator example, we might observe "Doing" elements of:

• • smelling ingredients
  • throwing out bad produce
  • opening the refrigerator door multiple times
  • moving items around to see the back of a shelf more clearly

Thoughts might include:

• • "Do I have the ingredients I need?"
  • "Do these ingredients go together?"
  • "Why has the produce gone bad? Should I change the temperature of the refrigerator?"

Lastly, feelings the user might experience could include:

• • curiosity to blend ingredients
  • comfort with a favourite vegetable that reminds the user of home
  • annoyance that the refrigerator door is difficult to open

Step 4: Identify gaps in the experience.

The reason for the "Doing", "Thinking", and "Feeling" construction of the activity is to look for opportunities for improvement in the form of points of inefficiency (found in "Doing"), points of confusion (found in "Thinking"), and pain points (found in "Feeling"). These are gaps in the user experience to which your team - and your solution - can respond!

In the refrigerator example, we could potentially identify the following themes:

• • Point of inefficiency - The shelves make it difficult to see all the refrigerator's contents at once.
  • Point of confusion - The user is unsure if they have set the temperature correctly.
  • Pain point - The door is difficult to open, annoying the user rather than aiding in the cooking process.

In a typical design thinking process, you will often find multiple points of inefficiency, confusion, and pain.

Step 5: Narrow in.

Once you've created your as-is scenario, you will discover there are likely many gaps that your team can address. However, it's often not realistic to try to solve every point of inefficiency, confusion, or pain that you identify. Instead, work as a team to narrow down the issues by voting. One option to facilitate this is to use "voting dots", virtual stickers, or virtual drawing tools to denote the points of inefficiency, points of confusion, and/or pain points that resonate most with each team member.

Your SI Challenge As-Is Scenario

The as-is scenario is a very helpful tool to help your team empathize with the user and start to define the problem they are experiencing. For your SI Challenge, your team will be completing an as-is scenario by building on the empathy map that you create. Enhance your understanding of this critical tool with the activity below.

Activity: Celia's As-Is Scenario

Celia has been hard at work designing a solution for the IMAGINE Clinic's appointment booking system. She wants to understand exactly how clinic patients are experiencing the current situation - the "as-is" scenario. For this, Celia created a persona description based on her empathy map observations. This persona is named Adrianna. Below, we can find an as-is scenario that Celia created based on Adrianna's experiences. Scenario: Adrianna woke up feeling various cold-like symptoms. This captures their experience of trying to book an appointment and access health support using the current system at Celia's clinic.

Instructions:

Drag and drop the text onto the appropriate sticky notes, then click the blue "Check" button.

What Did Celia Find?

By doing the as-is scenario exercise, Celia discovered the following points about the user experience of her persona (Adrianna):

• Point of inefficiency: Adrianna stayed on hold for a long time. Is there a better way to determine if there are any appointments available?
• Point of confusion: Adrianna isn't sure how much detail about her symptoms she should share with the receptionist. Is there a way to make this process simpler?
• Pain point: Ultimately, Adrianna did not have to come the office - some regular pharmacy medication would have been sufficient. Can Celia develop a solution that helps patients understand when a clinic visit is necessary?

Summary of Reflection Tools

There are many tools to help you with the Reflect stage of the loop. Not all of them are required for the design thinking process. You may choose to use one, two, or many of these approaches to help you think through your SI Challenge.

Below is a table summary of the different tools we explored in the Reflect section.

References

IBM. (n.d.). Stakeholder Map. https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/toolkit/activity/stakeholder-map Links to an external site.