{"id":855,"date":"2019-06-26T17:17:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T00:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/?p=855"},"modified":"2019-07-04T10:46:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T17:46:49","slug":"a2-3-empathy-phase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/a2-3-empathy-phase\/","title":{"rendered":"A2-3: Empathy Phase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">My design challenge is how to ensure the web developer students spend valuable and efficient time on planning and developing their professional portfolio website geared toward their after-program goals, provide the guidance what they look for, without overwhelming them with information and resources.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Portfolio Website module is a ten-day course over seven-eight weeks, and in parallel, the learners work on their capstone project. Students are to plan, design, develop and publish a professional-level portfolio website, to showcase all their digital work in a fully functioning publicly accessible website to apply for web development related jobs. The learners do not meet me every day, and I am not able to see their progress and keep up their engagement in person. I guide the students and provide them with feedback in between the course days on different platforms. The recently graduated class was the first when I run the module in this hybrid format and as everything after the first run needs improvement.<\/p>\n<p>The web\/app development field heavily relies on understanding the user. To design and develop any digital solution, one must delve into the target audience. Coming from a design, development and service development background, I have had a few opportunities to become familiar with various methods to help to better understand the user.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Audience:<\/strong> web developer students reaching the final modules of their web development certificate program.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Main parameters:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Age is mainly between 25-40, with the occasional just out of high school participants and a few more mature students (40-55).<\/li>\n<li>Have a few years of work experience.<\/li>\n<li>Most students are in transition to a new career field.<\/li>\n<li>Some are new to Canada and pursue either a new career or a local certificate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Main stakeholders in the learning module:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-858 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2019\/06\/portfolios-300x280.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"280\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2019\/06\/portfolios-300x280.jpg 300w, https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2019\/06\/portfolios-768x718.jpg 768w, https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/99\/2019\/06\/portfolios.jpg 931w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/280;\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Current students.<\/li>\n<li>Potential employers\/industry people in case of desired employment.<\/li>\n<li>Clients\/small businesses in case of pursuing freelancing business (this is rare right after the program).<\/li>\n<li>Program instructors.<\/li>\n<li>Experts, such as career advisor who facilitates IT related resume and interview skills workshop.<\/li>\n<li>Graduated students who experienced the hiring process with similar knowledge and work experience.<\/li>\n<li>I, who supervises the curriculum of the program and facilitates the Portfolio Project module.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"su-pullquote su-pullquote-align-left\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\"><em>When you have empathy with someone, your concern is to understand the other person; you feel as if you are the other (Kouprie &amp; Visser, 2009, p. 441)<\/em><\/span>.<\/div>\n<p>In reviewing the empathy methods as described in the Bootcamp Bootleg (Stanford University Institute of Design, 2016) and the Design Kit (IDEO, 2015), I believe that a combination of methods is the best to establish empathy with my audience and stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p>Facilitating the previous intake\u2019s portfolio course and experiencing and solving the issues, as well as continuously receiving feedback from the students, provided me with a lot of insights, observations and ideas on the possible changes in the module. I observed the students as they approached the different stages of the project. I also went through a similar experience as the students when I launched my web developer career a few years ago. Therefore, I\u2019ve already made use of what IDEO (2015) describes as peers observing peers, and immersion.\u00a0I also have a few years of experience in coaching and mentoring subordinates and students.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class='et-box et-default'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class='et-box-content'>Our empathy is rooted in our life experiences and social and emotional biases. In his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Thinking, Fast and Slow\u00a0book<\/a>, Daniel Kahneman (2011) explains how our thought processes are split into system one (fast, reactive, emotional) and system two (slow, reflective, logical). Kahneman also describes how bias, availability, proximity, that power system one, often mislead us. Sympathy, empathy, and compassion fit under system one and are prone to all these errors.\u00a0We make decisions as designers based on years of experience what shaped our biases toward our preferences, but our audience does not see the world through our eyes. Thus, we should move our thought process from the emotional and reactive system one to the reflective system two, to take a critical look and create better designs by truly placing the people we communicate with at the center of our process &#8230;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/a1-empathy-and-design\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&gt;&gt;&gt;<\/a>.<\/div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For the LRNT-527 course assignment, I plan to contact the following stakeholders:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <strong>program graduate<\/strong>, who also teaches the capstone project in the program while the students work on their portfolio site. His experience and observations can be highly beneficial.<\/li>\n<li>An <strong>alumna<\/strong> who participated in this recent \u201chybrid\u201d version of the Portfolio Website module.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">I plan to observe their reaction and spark a dialogue with them individually for 40-60 minutes. I intend to use either <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods\/44\">conversation starters<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods\/24\">card sort<\/a> to engage them (IDEO, 2015).\u00a0Both methods are about getting a reaction and sparking dialogue. In Conversation starters, the idea is to suggest a number of ideas around a theme to the audience and then see how they react and encourage creativity. Card sort is a quick and relatively simple way to start a conversation about what matters most to the audience. A deck of cards is involved, each with a word or single image, and then ask them to rank them in order of preference, to gain insight into what counts. Both methods are widely used in user experience design to understand the desired message of a website\/app and create the architecture of the site.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A plan to chat with the <strong>career advisor<\/strong>, who we hire in the program to facilitate the resume and interview skills workshops, to conduct a short so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods\/43\">expert interview<\/a>. Experts in the involved fields can \u201cget us up to speed quickly on a topic, giving the key insights into relevant history, context, and innovations\u201d (IDEO, 2015, para. 1).<\/li>\n<li>I can also conduct\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods\/21\">secondary research,\u00a0<\/a>to learn about the broader context and the innovations in this area. Although secondary research is time-consuming but can validate ideas, assumptions and input from the stakeholders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Necessary resources:<\/strong>\u00a0The resources required to complete the empathy phase of the exercise involving participants from the target audience and stakeholders, as well as compile my observations and conduct secondary research is a meeting room, pencils, paper, iPad + Apple Pencil, and computer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Challenges \/ Constraints:<\/strong>\u00a0I anticipate a few challenges and potential constraints. It is summer time and the recently graduated students who experienced this hybrid format already left. Same timing challenge applies to the previous graduate\/instructor, who just left for his holiday. The upcoming class did not reach this module yet and have not learned anything about the portfolio.<\/p>\n<p>Countless activities, features and information could be useful for the Portfolio Website module\u2019s digital learning resource which could engage the students. However, the module has only ten face-to-face days with six hours each and the other days, the learners are occupied with a different project. Therefore, the time for the face-to-face activities is limited and it is also important to reserve significant time for 1-on-1 meetings for verbal and personalized feedback for the students.<\/p>\n<p>The main goal of instructional design in multimedia learning is to reduce the unnecessary cognitive load and maximize the cognitive capacity to help the learners to reach the learning outcomes (Kruger &amp; Doherty, 2016). Cognitive load (CL) is the total load placed on working memory by instructional information. The solution for my challenge must be focused and to the point in the digital learning resource and leave only the necessary elements to balance the cognitive load and avoid hurting learning (Clark &amp; Mayer, 2011).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The illustrations are created by the author.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">References<\/p>\n<p>Clark, R. C., &amp; Mayer, R. E. (2011). <em>E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning<\/em> (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.<\/p>\n<p>IDEO. (2015). Design Kit &#8211; Methods. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.designkit.org\/methods<\/p>\n<p>Kahneman, D. (2011). <em>Thinking, fast and slow<\/em> (E-book). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/p>\n<p>Kouprie, M., &amp; Visser, F. S. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user\u2019s life. <em>Journal of Engineering Design<\/em>, <em>20<\/em>(5), 437\u2013448. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/09544820902875033<\/p>\n<p>Kruger, J.-L., &amp; Doherty, S. (2016). Measuring cognitive load in the presence of educational video: Towards a multimodal methodology. In <em>Australasian Journal of Educational Technology<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/repository.nwu.ac.za\/bitstream\/handle\/10394\/24668\/2016Measuring_cognitive.pdf?sequence=1<\/p>\n<p>Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). bootcamp bootleg. Retrieved from http:\/\/dschool-old.stanford.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My design challenge is how to ensure the web developer students spend valuable and efficient time on planning and developing their professional portfolio website geared toward their after-program goals, provide the guidance what they look for, without overwhelming them with information and resources. The Portfolio Website module is a ten-day course over seven-eight weeks, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt527"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0057\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}