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Reflecting back on my experience completing the Empathy and Define phase of the design thinking process which resulted in a Human-Centered Need Assessment, I am grateful for the activities that led to the creation of the needs assessment and view them as an essential component of the work required to take on such a task.

Activities 2 and 3 were intended to guide the instructional designer through the Empathy Phase of the design thinking process. According to the Stanford University Institute of Design (2016), the Empathy Phase is meant to be the starting point in any design challenge and when employed, can effectively get an instructional designer out of their office and into the lives of their user’s (Kouprie, M., & Visser, F., 2009, p. 438).  Why is this important? Matthews, Williams, Yanchar & McDonald (2017) say that “scholars within the fields of instructional design and distance learning are calling for more empathic approaches to design, including careful consideration of the perspectives and experiences of individual learners” (p. 487). Utilizing methods from  Bootcamp Bootleg, that are specifically designed to elicit empathy, I was able to ‘step into the user’s life’ as Kouprie & Visser (2009) advise and create a strong connection with the people that I am designing for and better understand the challenge from their perspective. There were many methods to choose from and therefore it became difficult to choose only one. In hindsight, the empathy phase requires more time than an instructional designer typically has or even puts aside. Matthews et.al, (2017) point out that many instructional designers have a difficult time discerning how much time is necessary to spend in the Empathy Phase (p. 486). In future endeavors, having experienced the wealth of information that can be gained from digging deep into the lives of user’s, I will put more emphasis on the Empathy Phase to enable more patterns and themes to be extracted.

Moving forward from the Empathy Phase, in the Stanford University Institute of Design (2016) model is the Define Phase. Activity 4 was intended to guide the instructional designer through the Define Phase of the design thinking process. The Define Phase is intended to help the instructional designer to step back out of the user’s life and back into the role of the designer (Kouprie, M., & Visser, F., 2009, p. 445). Methods for the Define Phase are also plentiful, again making it difficult to choose only one. Utilizing the Define Methods available from Bootcamp bootleg and IDEO Design Kit – Methods allowed for the creation of clear and concise Point-of-View (POV) statements from each of the participants interviewed that led to the creation of one actionable How Might We? question that reflected the participants’ unique perspectives and needs. Although the time for this exercise was also short, I would need to allot a similar if not slightly larger amount of time in this area as compared to the Empathy Phase which could have used a great deal more time.

All of the methods that were presented from Bootcamp bootleg and IDEO were simple to complete and easy to understand. There was enough ambiguity in the instructions as to not stifle creativity however, may have not been adequate enough for instructional designers with limited experience with the design thinking process. It may be beneficial, depending on the time that an instructional designer has to devote to the process, to repeat the Empathy and Define Phases as an iterative process to extract as much data as possible to be incorporated into the design. Overall, the experience was positive and enlightening albeit a very tight timeframe. In retrospect, the size of the challenge should ultimately dictate the time spend on each phase of the design thinking process.

References

IDEO. (2015). Design Kit – Methods. Retrieved from http://www.designkit.org/methods

Kouprie, M., & Visser, F. S. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user’s life. Journal of Engineering Design, 20(5), 437–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/09544820902875033

Matthews, M. T., Williams, G. S., Yanchar, S. C., & McDonald, J. K. (2017). Empathy in Distance Learning Design Practice. TechTrends, 61(5), 486–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-017-0212-2

Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). Bootcamp Bootleg. Retrieved from http://dschool-old.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf