My design challenge is to create a digital educational resource for BC Bioenergy Network (BBN), an industry-led and government-funded initiative that supports the development of bioenergy technologies.

In Activity 1, I determined that the users will be adult consumers in Canada. The educational digital resource will be featured on BBN’s website and support their goal in developing bio-energy and bio-economy sector through education, knowledge sharing and advocacy.

To determine the specific educational needs and challenges of adult consumers for this design challenge, I have selected the ‘Interview for Empathy’ method from Stanford University Institute of Design’s Bootcamp Bootleg.

The ‘Interview for Empathy’ method is a method to better understand a person’s choices and behaviors and as a result, identify user needs that can enable the creation of a design to meet their needs. This interview method has specific elements including asking ‘why’ multiple times in response to user answers, encouraging the user to tell real stories, allowing time for reflection by pausing after questions and never helping a user to answer the question. For this method, the questions themselves are also specific; they are neutral and designed to not result in one-word answers. The ‘Interview for Empathy’ method also recommends to record the audio of the interview, so that the interviewer can take note of body language and emotions and properly engage the user.

This method will allow me to gain empathy for my design challenge through gaining a deeper understanding of differing users needs. Through the users telling stories and observations that I make during the interviews, it will better frame any gaps in users’ knowledge and/or their interests in learning about bioenergy.

Some resources that I have used to complete this method are:

1) IDEO’s Design Kit – Interview

2) IDEO’s Design Kit – Recruiting Tools. Here are how the steps of this resource influenced my user selection:

·       Step 1: After reading Extremes and Mainstreams, I strategically identified a few users for my user interviews that may represent extreme users. For my challenge, I defined an extreme user as someone that may not just use their new knowledge as an adult consumer but that also worked in a field that would benefit from an increased awareness of bioenergy. For example, one of my users works in construction, a sector that could potentially convert a majority of their product and energy usage to bio-products and bioenergy.

 ·       Step 2: To decrease bias and account for a variety of factors in determining who my users were, I determined that my users would be from differing provinces in Canada: Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. In addition, I have also interviewed both men and women.

 ·       Step 3: In evaluating the sensitivity of my topic, I determined that I needed to sensitive around the area of money that consumers had to spend on products and energy. For example, some people may be offended if my questions led them to believe that limitations in their disposable income may affect their ability to engage in protecting the environment and participating in the bio-economy.

 ·       Step 4: Though group interviews are a valuable tool, I decided to do one-on-one interviews. Through my understanding of the ‘Interview for Empathy’ method, I perceive one-on-one interviews to more effectively employ this method to determine user needs and challenges. This includes engaging the user in a deep conversation as well as observing their thoughts, emotions and motivations. With only one user to focus on and observe in my face-to-face or video interviews, I am better able to write nonverbal cue data that relates to the qualitative answers that I will voice record in our interviews.

3) To determine the format of the interview and how to write the questions or discussion points for the interview, I read, consulted and utilized the following resources:

https://medium.springboard.com/the-art-of-the-user-interview-cf40d1ca62e8

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-conduct-user-interviews

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-prepare-for-a-user-interview-and-ask-the-right-questions

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/pros-and-cons-of-conducting-user-interviews

https://medium.com/@StaceyDyer/design-thinking-what-is-an-empathy-interview-25f71bd496d7

 Challenges faced to implement the ‘Interview for Empathy’ method within my instructional context:

–          Balancing the educational requirements of the user with the promotional nature of the resource to not only educate, but promote the use of bio-energy among Canadians.

–          Some research may be required to ensure that I have sufficient knowledge on the bioenergy topic in order to create the educational resource with correct information.

  • Potential Solution: Using one of the methods defined from IDEO’s Design Kit , after the user interviews are complete, I can conduct an ‘expert interview’ with a BNN employee to verify the information within the resource is correct, once I’ve defined the user need I am addressing.