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I sure wish I had the empathy building tools and knowledge I have now when I was creating needs assessments as an adult education instructor.\u00a0 <\/span>The beginning of each month\u2019s theme\/unit was a needs assessment with the class to ascertain what skills and tasks for life in Canada they felt they needed to develop.\u00a0 <\/span>Most of the time I did group questionnaires where they brainstormed ideas or asked each other questions, as well as individual surveys.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In this new context, I am now aware that a designer\u2019s real focus at this stage is to try to see through the eyes of the learner, and to find ways to link our own prior experiences to gain the perspective we need to try to figure out what learning environment would best benefit the given context.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For what I\u2019ve chosen to work on in my design challenge, I can see a combination of methods being of benefit at the empathy stage.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve been given permission to work with two employees and a board member at a non profit arts centre.\u00a0 <\/span>One of the employees is in the process of transitioning into a new job in the office, and has been an instructor previously.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My plan is to combine a bit of a fly on the wall approach with a brief interview.\u00a0 <\/span>I really like <\/span>IDEO\u2019s \u2018The Five Whys\u2019 approach, and I plan to create a few questions to get conversation going.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ll then follow them up with some creative \u2018why\u2019 questions in order to gather further information.\u00a0 <\/span>I have taken great pride in my ability to think on my feet as a teacher, and a challenge I may face in this context is how to create 5 effective why extension questions on the spot.\u00a0 <\/span>I want to try my best not to over-prepare, as I want to be as objective and in the\u00a0 <\/span>moment as I can, in order to not lead the conversation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I would like to combine the above method with the dschool\u2019s Empathy Map.\u00a0 <\/span>My idea here is that I may record to help with the say<\/b> as well as to take notes for the do, think and feel<\/b>.\u00a0 <\/span>The intention is to watch this person working and their body language, while adding in the occasional question to try to get an idea of their experience, as well as get an idea of what they find challenging.\u00a0 <\/span>I will use these observations, and the why questions mentioned above to develop needs <\/b>and insights<\/b> later.\u00a0 <\/span>I think this combination of \u2018discovery\u2019 and \u2018immersion\u2019 will allow me to build a profile that will really help me to see how they approach the job.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I am also considering creating a composite character profile, though I may create multiple as part of my later development.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel strongly that the personalities involved in this arts school have a lot to do with what makes productive work there challenging, in particular the interaction between the few staff members and the volunteer board.\u00a0 <\/span>Finding an effective training method that can work in this context also needs to take into account the others who are affected by the work this staff member does in this role, so how I approach the learning activities needs to bear that in mind.\u00a0 <\/span>The way this new staff member sees the job and how others do may differ, so skills to be built or aspects that are essential may differ slightly as well.<\/span><\/p>\n Challenges<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n time to get the information I need<\/span><\/p>\n the new staff member being open and honest so as to allow me to gain perspective on her needs<\/span><\/p>\n biases that I may have about skills an artist may lack when taking on this type of work<\/span><\/p>\n undue influence from the powers that be on how they may \u2018see\u2019 the training <\/span><\/p>\n Resources needed<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Iphone to record<\/span><\/p>\n paper and a pen to make notes (perhaps divided into do, think and feel<\/b>) with room for insights and needs to be added later<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Resources<\/p>\n IDEO. (2015).\u00a0Design Kit \u2013 Methods<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods<\/p>\n Kouprie, M., & Visser, F. S. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: Stepping into and out of the user\u2019s life.\u00a0Journal of Engineering Design, 20<\/em>(5), 437-448.<\/p>\n Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). Bootcamp Bootleg<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/dschool-old.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I sure wish I had the empathy building tools and knowledge I have now when I was creating needs assessments as an adult education instructor.\u00a0 The beginning of each month\u2019s theme\/unit was a needs assessment with the class to ascertain… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[57,49,21],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt527","tag-designthinking","tag-empathy","tag-rrumalat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}