Your thoughts, their shoes

Are you working on something at the moment for a client, customer, colleague or yourself? Designing or creating something - a solution to a problem, a response to a call for help or a new service or product idea swishing about in your head?

Whenever you step in to any type of 'design' mode - a response, solution, creation or proposal - you need to bring together your thoughts, and a good dose of 'standing in their shoes'. 

Yes, that old saying of walking a mile in someone else's shoes gives you a sense of what it's like for them. 

A visual way of doing that is using an Empathy Map. 

Here's one I prepared earlier for you!



Either click and save to print this one, or quickly sketch out the lines and labels on a whiteboard, flip chart or a blank page in front of you. 

You can use post-it notes to write your thoughts on and then post them on the chart... or you can write directly on the page or canvas. Make the canvas big and it will work brilliantly as a conversation and collaboration tool. It's certain to get diverse views up on the wall!

And you can keep the chart visible and refer to it to remind yourself - and others - of who you're working on this 'thing' for. 

I worked with a customer solutions team this week and we collaborated on several Empathy Maps. Rather than talking generally about customers, users or clients 'out there', 'them' or 'those people', we developed a couple of customer personas. These imaginary - but quite true to life - customers kept focus on what they were really thinking, feeling, saying and doing. We gave them names and characteristics that were representative of the target audiences for the program of work.

It was a quick process to identify what problems and pain we were solving, and what successes or gains we would be delivering. We also included some of the comments from research and focus group conversations that some of the team had been having recently. 

Ooooh it was a 'rich' and interactive session! 

With this information as a great foundation, you can then add your own thinking, expertise and input.

It's one of the key elements to design thinking - start with that empathy, understanding and customer or user perspective. You can find more about Empathy Maps from a wander with Google or in the book Gamestorming.

Now what are you working on at the moment? How can I help you with that? Let's create an Empathy Map together and see how good thinking and some time in other people's shoes can create a range of brilliant solutions for you and your clients or customers.