Beyond the post-its part four: Empathy research
Now we know why we’re taking a human-centred approach to develop a strategy, we have a plan, we’ve communicated the plan, and we have key stakeholders lined up to talk to – it’s now time to get to work on building our understanding of the topic at hand.
As humans, we’re typically great at doing desk and numbers-based research. We send surveys, we read research reports, we analyse numbers. We’re not so great at conducting qualitative research – talking to people to understand the human emotion behind the data. To define a problem or opportunity, we have to first understand the problem or opportunity from the people who matter (those who experience it: the key stakeholders we identified in the planning phase).
There is a range of techniques we can use to immerse ourselves in a problem or opportunity to build understanding in the discovery phase. A great resource to explore all the options here is the IDEO method cards. But one of the most common, and most useful techniques is qualitative interviews.
QUALITATIVE VS QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
While the data often tells us what is happening, it rarely tells us why. Take a super simple example: Imagine there is an ice cream stand on the street corner offering anyone who passes by a free ice cream. The data tells us one in 10 people stop for the ice cream. We now know ‘what’ but we have no further clue on ‘why’ the other nine people walked by. Is it because it’s the middle of winter and too cold for ice cream (never an issue in my world, but this is about stepping in someone else's shoes)? Does the ice cream seller give off a creepy vibe? Are people worried about what the catch is? We can’t gather this insight through observation. We must go and talk to people.
INTERVIEW TYPES
There are three types of interviews you can conduct:
Structured. All interview questions are predetermined and don’t change in topic or order in the interview.
Semi-structured. You plan an interview guide, but the questions you ask in the interview itself will depend on the answers given, meaning some questions will differ or not be on the interview guide at all.
Unstructured. The questions are not predetermined and are generated on the fly in the interview… closer to an everyday conversation.
From my experience, you get the best results when you take a semi-structured approach to interview planning. Use a set of questions to guide the conversation, but not at the expense of listening to the answers and digging deeper into what you hear.
An interview is not a survey. Say it louder for the people at the back... an interview is not simply a survey done in person (or via Zoom). To make the most of the time someone is investing, you have to listen to understand, and use this to drive your questions.
LEAVE YOUR BIAS AT THE DOOR
We are all walking bags of bias. According to the Cognitive Bias Codex there are an estimated 180 cognitive biases. While bias is something we tend to think of negatively, some of these are important, and we all have them.
Our job when interviewing people is to leave our bias at the door. This helps us really understand the problem or opportunity from the perspective of the person we are speaking to without our lens impacting this (hence why they are called empathy interviews).
This is important not only in how we frame the questions we ask but also in how we respond (including our body language) and how we gather insight from the interviews.
THE FIRST QUESTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT
After you have built rapport to ensure the interviewee is comfortable with what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what we will do with the information, the first question is typically the most important.
I’ve had 30-minute empathy interviews in the past where the first question is the only question I’ve had to ask. You’re getting someone to open up about their experience, and it should be intentionally broad to allow them to talk about whatever they see as the most important aspect of that experience.
For example, from the current IT strategy project, the opening question would be something along the lines of: Can you tell me about a recent example where you’ve engaged the IT team, what was that experience like?
There is no judgement here, no hint this could have been a positive or negative experience, and no direction on the outcome you’re looking for. Compare this, for example, with ‘What’s hard about working with IT?’ Here you’re already suggesting this experience is hard when it may not be.
From there, you can craft your questions based on what that experience was like. Typically, follow-up questions would follow a why, what, when, who, how format.
THE POWER OF THE PAUSE
The best piece of advice I got when I started doing this type of work was don’t be afraid of silence. This has been the hardest learning curve for this self-confessed people pleaser. If I ask someone a question and this is met with silence, my natural reaction is to jump in and give examples. But this is the trojan horse for bias. Providing examples suggests to people what you are looking for, and this is typically built off your own experience. People also process information differently, and the gap between a question and an answer differs for everyone. One of my rules now is to count to 10 in my head before I rephrase the question. An eternity when you start but it becomes more natural over time.
LET THE PEOPLE TALK
Along with pausing when you ask a question, letting people tell their stories without interruption is the best way to uncover insight. This means giving people the space to share without probing with questions while they’re sharing.
There will be gaps and areas where your ears prick up to dig deeper into the emotion behind something… but come back to this when they have had a chance to share, rather than interrupting on the way through. Common sense – but not that common.
CLOSING
The importance of how you close the interview shouldn’t be underestimated. Often people end up sharing examples or information that can feel personal or sensitive on reflection. People need to feel comfortable with what you will do with this information.
This is where it’s important to reiterate the focus is on ‘themes’, not individual sentiment. It’s not a case of “Rachel said this” rather than these are the themes that emerged, supported by some evidence (generally an anonymous quote or a point-of-view story – but more on this next time). And don’t forget to send a follow-up to say thank you for the investment of their time.
Now we have done a bunch of interviews, next up we’ll look at how to turn those into insight.
Stay tuned...