Interviewing for Empathy
Interviewing for empathy allows the design team to become more human-centered
What is interviewing for empathy?
Through Interviewing for Empathy, the Design team is able to gain a deeper understanding of the customer’s spoken and unspoken needs. These interviews provide a tremendous opportunity for the Design team members to spend time with the end-users and to listen to the customer’s stories about how they experience the organization’s products and services. As the team conducts interviews and engages customers in storytelling, the Design team can dive deeper into the customer’s values, beliefs, and motivations by asking appropriate follow-up questions.
Through the process of interviewing for empathy, the Design team is able to become more human-centered – gaining clarity on the customer’s specific situation, context, behaviors, needs, challenges, and goals. In the later phases of the Design process, when the team begins to think about solutions, it is the customer’s stories that will serve as the inspiration for what solutions are created.
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Being able to Interview for Empathy to understand the customer’s spoken and unspoken needs are critical when initiating a project, change, or new idea. This topic is a core concept of applying creative problem-solving through design thinking. To learn more about design, please visit our Introduction to Design Thinking Course.
The Design Thinking course teaches a creative problem-solving that will give any professional an advantage in their industry or career.
- Designers or Product Development professionals that are motivated to bring innovative new products and services to their business and customers.
- Consultants who want to offer their clients a model for applying creative problem-solving to help address business challenges.
- Human Resource professionals seeking to develop more human-centered solutions to support workforce members while driving higher levels of employee engagement.
- Members of Leadership who are wishing to gain competitive advantage by differentiating their business’s products and services.
- Individuals or Teams that are searching for new ways to solve complex problems by placing the customer’s needs at the center of their solutions.
This course will help expose the learner to various design thinking tools and mental models – all with the emphasis on innovating through creative problem-solving.
Our objective is to provide the learner with practical tools for applying a versatile 3-step design thinking process within their organizations. Through this framework, the learner will be able to reframe problems from the customer’s perspective. With this perspective in mind, the learner will drive improvements around the customer experience using tools such as deep-dive interview, journey mapping, empathy mapping, and rapid prototyping.
Need help introducing use of Interviewing for Empathy at your organization?
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