Generative Research for Stage 1 of Design Thinking: Empathise
The Stages of Design Thinking
Since its inception as a hybrid of a range of theoretical and practical disciplines - Design Thinking has emerged as a robust, yet agile set of processes that focuses on the human first, and the intersection of design and innovation.
Design Thinking incorporates five key stages that revolve around human-centred design.
This is inclusive of everything human-related - Human behaviour, human experiences, and user journeys.
The five stages of Design Thinking are;
Empathise
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Before we continue with this immersive piece, we must stress that Design Thinking, as a process, is non-linear. It is agile, it is iterative, and it involves strategic and creative movements between the various stages. When needed of course.
The Importance of Empathy
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Whilst every stage of the process is integral to the success of innovation, problem solving, and design, we want to focus on stage 1, Empathise. Why? Well, Design Thinking is all about the person, people, customers, users, employees, patients - The human, and human-centred design. Stage 1 lays the foundation for this human-centric approach to design.
The empathise stage of design thinking does exactly what it says on the tin. The goal of stage one of Design Thinking is to help designers, innovators, UX teams etc to build empathy for those that matter most. Why is empathy important? How does empathy impact the design of a product or service? To simply put it, empathy and empathy building is critical to design because it reduces the risk of designing the wrong product. Or even the right product for the wrong person. At the empathy stage of design thinking, a team can come together and dive into the lives of those that they seek to solve problems for. Problems! This is another central component of stage 1.
To successfully build empathy for people, stage 1 can help you identify and uncover unique or universal day-to-day problems that you can address and design solutions for through the remaining stages of your Design Thinking initiative. So, this is where generative research comes into play.
What is Generative Research?
If you are new to the term of Generative Research no need to be alarmed. The concept is often used interchangeably with Exploratory research and increasingly, Discovery research. In a nutshell, generative research can be defined by a set of techniques and practices that are adopted by researchers to uncover rich insights into people's lives. Most notably, generative research is applied in UX or user research, and aims to capture contextual and qualitative data about human experiences and behaviours. As generative is exploratory by nature, it is inherently accomplished through qualitative research methodologies.
Qualitative Methods for Generative Research
There are a range of qualitative methods that are used to help with generative research. In depth interviews (IDIs), Focus Groups, Diary Studies, and Ethnographic techniques such as participant observations are some of the most commonly applied qualitative research methods. There are a few notable methods that appear to be increasing in popularity across the qualitative research community. We attribute this to opportunities that have come about with mobile technology and the ubiquity of smartphones in this digital world.
For example, ethnographic research now has many variations. Mobile ethnography, digital ethnography, online ethnography, and virtual ethnography, are all terms that pretty much are used to describe the same thing - Ethnographic research that is conducted remotely and leverages the power of mobile technology. Essentially, technological capabilities do not require the researcher to be present. Research participants do not experience the intrusiveness of traditional ethnographic observational techniques.
Diary studies are also a long standing qualitative research methodology. A traditional approach to diary studies involves research participants documenting their experiences, behaviours, emotions, and opinions on pen and paper. It’s as simple as that. However, there is always the risk that research participants will fill in and complete their daily diary entries retrospectively, and this can impact the validity of the data. The concept of running a diary study is increasingly being discussed in the context of mobile. Mobile technology affords researchers the capabilities to design robust, yet flexible UX diary studies where they can interact with and capture diary entries in real time. In addition, mobile diary studies incorporate the use of video and photos to help contextualise the user experience for Research Ops teams.
Long story short, generative research has a pool of qualitative techniques with increasing technological capabilities that can be used at stage 1 of design thinking.
How Generative Research Benefits Stage 1 of Design Thinking
There are a number of reasons why generative research can benefit the empathise stage of design thinking. Let’s cover the main ones.
Qualitative Data
As already mentioned, generative research leverages the power of qualitative methodologies. The exploratory nature of generative research calls for qualitative techniques to be designed and incorporated into the research strategy. Qualitative techniques will always give more data that can help you understand the why of human problems. Sentiment behind human experiences is critical for empathy building and qualitative methods are typically the best approach to capturing subjective data.
Context
We often hear (and write) about contextual insights. Context is one of the benefits of generative research that can overcome the limitations of traditional methodologies. It is important for empathy building. When researchers design a strong generative research objective and strategy, context is usually one of the goals of the output. Context means that we, as researchers, and as designers, are able to appreciate human experience because we get a holistic view of these experiences. The environment surrounding human experiences. The human interactions, and everyday influences on human behaviour are part of the contextual insights that result from generative research.
Empathy Building
Last but not least, empathy building. Irrespective of design thinking, generative research goes hand in hand with empathy. Empathy is a result of the qualitative techniques that you incorporate into your research strategy. Empathy is also a result of the contextual insights that you capture. This is more often than not harnessed by technology, visual media, such as user generated videos. Because empathy is one of the five stages of design thinking, generative research is often viewed as a perfect fit in accomplishing this.
Reflecting on Generative Research and Design Thinking
As we conclude this piece, it is important to reflect and think about what all of this actually means. Design thinking is indeed an increasingly adopted approach to product and service design. It is used to identify real world problems with the ultimate goal of designing solutions for these problems. Even more, design thinking is human-centric. The concept focuses on everything about human experiences and everyday life. Generative research is used as an approach to explore the lives of those that matter most to our research agenda. Teams that adopt design thinking will ultimately benefit from generative research where the goal of both is to empathise with the human experiences.
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We’ve supported thousands of research projects covering everything from mapping the path to purchase for aquarium filters to mortgage buyer journeys to mapping the patient journey of kidney transplant patients.
If you’d like to discuss a specific patient diary research project or are just curious to learn more, get in touch now.
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