Empathy research
Empathy research is research designed to help a team understand what people experience, think and feel, in their own context and words, as the foundation for design or strategy. It is the empathize stage of design thinking in practice.
How it works
The methods are those that bring the team close to people: in-depth interviews, observation in homes and workplaces, diary studies and shadowing. The emphasis is on specific stories and moments rather than opinions about a product, and on including the team, who watch sessions, listen to recordings or join field visits.
Findings are often synthesized into empathy maps (what people say, think, do and feel), personas and journey maps. The value lies in the specific, messy detail of real people. An artifact drawn from assumptions shows what the team already believes, so the research team's job is to keep each one tied to the sessions and quotes behind it.
A worked example
A home insurer's claims team spends a week on empathy research: 12 interviews with recent claimants and 2 days listening in on claims calls. The team hears 8 claimants describe filing at night while their home was damaged, and redesigns the first claims screen for use on a phone, in a hurry.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
The feels quadrant of an empathy map can be filled from Pulse's video insights, the emotion on a participant's face that the transcript of the same answer misses.