Driving Results
We’ve all done it. We’re using our computer, or trying to program our VCR, maybe even doing something simple, like backing the car out of the driveway. And it’s just not happening. The function we’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist in the software and we can’t get the VCR to agree to tape our favorite show. The mirror in the car isn’t wide enough to show us the garbage cans, piled on the side of the road, which we’re about to hit. So what do most of us do? We find ways to get around these problems without necessarily solving them. We don’t even necessarily contemplate ways to make these products work in our favor. But what should a company whose interest is in creating, improving or redesigning better products, learn from this kind of information?
Market research has been the traditional approach for companies trying to discover which product innovations are the ones people really want. But while traditional market research remains highly important to companies in their efforts to create new product lines or services, it fails to address the customer’s inability to perceive possibilities for innovation and their limitations in guiding the development of new products. The products offered need to meet the expressed as well as the tacit desires of the consumer in order to be successful. Since the needs of the customer are often unrealized or unexpressed, companies are obligated to find other research methods to collect the kind of information they can use to meet such needs.
Add a Comment No CommentsWhat kind of research model is Empathic Design?
Empathic design, a form of observational research, has come to the attention of many corporations and companies as a valid and useful method addressing the tacit needs and wants of a set of customers. Employing the process of watching without interfering as a phenomenon occurs in the natural environment, empathic research bypasses the traditional focus group and survey method and instead concentrates on viewing the user doing her everyday activities in her own environment. It works on the governing principle that knowledge of how customers use products tells companies more than the customer themselves can.
For example, imagine a Hewlett Packard product developer is observing a surgeon in an operating room who is performing an intricate surgery by using a television screen to guide his scalpel. As personnel move about the operating room, the surgeon’s view of the screen periodically is obscured, but he does not complain. Although the surgeon has not asked for an improved product, the developer comes up with the idea for a helmet with a suspended screen that has the potential to substantially increase the accuracy of the surgeon’s work.1
1 Leonard, Dorothy and Jeffrey F. Rayport. Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. Boston: Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec 1997. Reprint #97606, page 107. Add a Comment No Comments
Why use Empathic Design research techniques?
Companies like Apple, Motorola, Xerox and Intel have integrated anthropologists into their corporate personnel. Their goal is to apply ethnographic skills, employed by anthropologists, to watch, interview and videotape consumers. Analysis of these collective observations provides the insight required to define new product concepts what will be valued by the consumer.
“The context is really critical,” says Jean Canavan, an anthropologist who is the manager of culture and technology initiatives at Motorola. “If we want to develop technologies that really fit into the way people live their day-to-day lives, then we have to understand how people really live.”2 Many anthropologists work with a concept called embodied knowledge — tacit, nonscientific knowledge — and look for ways to incorporate such information into product design. Embodied knowledge is “basically the intelligence in your muscles.”3
Anthropologists and empathic design teams are trained to pay attention to minute details that can often be overlooked. Paying attention to such “embodied knowledge” helped Matsushita build a better bread maker in 1987. The company sent a team of engineers to be apprenticed for several months to a master bread chef at the Osaka International Hotel in Japan. The magic ingredient turned out to be a special maneuver the chef executed with his hand while kneading the dough, so the engineers figured out how to mimic the movement with the machine.4
Canon introduces color printers for consumers’ household use. Sales were not as high as expected: the consumer was unsure how they could use such a product. Canon sent empathic design teams into customer’s homes to observe how printed materials were used. They looked at refrigerator doors and bedroom walls. The result was the highly successful “Canon Creative”, bundled software that creates greeting cards, t-shirts and posters, the items observed by the teams as predominant in homes.5
2 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
3 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
4 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
5 Hafner, Katie. Coming of Age in Palo Alto. New York Times On The Web. June 10, 1999.
Add a Comment No CommentsHow does the Empathic Design research model work?
An empathic design research model is simplistic. It is based on finding the answers to the following questions: Who should be observed; who should observe; and what should the observer watch? A five step process is involved: observation of the user; data capture (most often by videography or photography); analysis of data; brainstorming for solutions; and development of solutions. The major problem associated with empathic design is that people tend to act differently when they are aware they are being observed. This is combated by observers remaining for as long a period of time as necessary for subjects to become comfortable with the idea of being watched and thus, to act naturally.
Empathetic design can access five types of information which traditional market research cannot. These are:
- Triggers of use: what makes people use your products or service? Are they using it in the way that you expected?
- Interactions with the user’s environment: how does the product fit into the user’s unique operating system?
- User customization: does the user reinvent or redesign the product to better suit his/her own purpose?
- Intangible attributes of the product: i.e. does the smell associated with cleaning products make them more attractive to the consumer?
- Unarticulated user needs: the observation of consumers encountering a problem which they don’t realize can be fixed or may not even view as a problem.6
6 Leonard, Dorothy and Jeffrey F. Rayport. Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. Boston: Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec 1997. Reprint #97606, pages 105-107. Add a Comment No Comments
Our Approach: Funderstanding’s unique use of Empathic Design
At Funderstanding, one of our greatest strengths is our use of empathic design techniques in our research and observation of children. Our goal is to use this research to enable our clients to improve the products they make for kids. By observing kids in their own environments, at school and at home, both alone and in their interactions with others, we receive profound and unique insights into their behaviors which we believe will help clients understand them better.
Our approach follows a standard procedure employed by anthropologists. The observation of the students and the capturing of this data are at the forefront of our technique. We employ videographers to tape children of different age groups, in a variety of natural environments. These include school, work, student-led tours of their homes, and a “day in the life” of the student. We use our staff’s extensive background in education, educational design, anthropology and psychology to analyze the data and reflect, in-depth, on the findings. We then synthesize a set of clearly stated problems that stem from our reflections and collaboratively brainstorm for potential solutions. These solutions are instrumental in designing meaningful, high-impact design improvements.
What can we learn from observing the way children approach an activity? What sorts of activities are they drawn to, and how do they move from one to the next? Is their ability to handle complexity beyond what the adult presenter has assumed? Can we make their activities more worthwhile by adding or subtracting certain elements or by upgrading or downgrading the level of materials presented? By answering these questions, we can provide a product that is fundamentally geared toward the fulfillment of a child’s needs and goals and, at the same time, increase the child’s enjoyment. The net result is we enhance the likelihood of a positive experience for the child, which enhances our client’s brand at the same time.
By effectively using the results of our empathic design driven research we are able to design a product that can better meet the needs (both perceived and unrealized) of students, parents and our clients.
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