A design process is a creative problem-solving process that can be applied to any activity in your classroom. We use our creative problem solving process in FH Innovates, our student-run entrepreneurship program, to create everything from our product to our packaging, marketing campaigns, customer surveys, and everything in-between. Every problem we face or when we’re not sure about our next steps, we use our design process to help guide us. 

Our design process has 5 stages: empathy, define, imagine, make, and test. Every good design process should start with empathy because empathy is the key to deeper learning. The connection between empathy and happy customers in FH Innovates is easy to make, but the connection between empathy and deeper classroom learning may be harder to see.

I think back to when I taught high school English and the lesson I was most proud of: The Truth About Christopher Columbus. The lesson, by most standards, would be considered successful. I juxtaposed the outrageously sugar coated version of Columbus’ journey to the New World in our textbook with the book Lies My Teacher Told Me. We had class debates, a guiding question, research time, and I added in supplementary materials like opinion pieces and documentaries on the topic from diverse sources. The lesson ended in a persuasive essay asking students to defend their side that they would then present to their classmates. It checked nearly every PBL box. Students were engaged, the debate was healthy, and many students came away with a new perspective that they could apply to their life.  

Looking back on the lesson now with a new understanding of the amazing things that can be done when we lead with empathy, I see how I could have made that lesson better. What I’ve learned over the last five years since I started leading with empathy in the classroom is rarely does significant learning take place without students significantly interacting with users. Users are what I call stakeholders, or people who have the knowledge and experience to help my students understand the nuances of a topic or problem. They are users because they interact with or are impacted by what we’re learning about on a regular basis.

The Columbus lesson should have included significant, human-centered interaction with stakeholders like indigenous peoples, scholars, and other personalities that students could interact with to gain a better understanding of the Columbus lesson. Back then, students weren’t interacting with users. They were only interacting with me, the material, and each other. Learning didn’t leave the classroom walls. By using a design process that focuses on empathy, I can do better. My kids can understand and share the feelings of people impacted by what we’re learning in the classroom by interacting with them in a meaningful way.

Now that I know better, I use four activities to engage students with the users who matter to their learning. Here are the four activities I use whenever possible to help students meaningfully interact with users. I’ll write about these activities as they are used in our edcorps, the way to understand and solve people’s problems, but I challenge you to find ways to adapt these activities to your classroom.

1. Interviews

Interviewing is the main way we learn to understand the feelings and needs of our users. If we don’t understand our users and their needs, we won’t be able to come up with a perfect solution for their problem. If we can’t solve their problem, they won’t buy our product. 

We use empathy interviews in two main ways: to find problems to solve or validate preconceived ideas.

When we don’t have an idea for a product, we use interviews to get to know people in our community and the frustrations or challenges they’re facing. Through these conversations, and through the empathy stage as a whole, we will try to notice areas where we may be able to help improve their lives. Because, as d.school points out, practicing noticing helps find the opportunities and needs that exist all around us hidden in plain sight.

Other times, students will have an idea before they even start our design process. When students have these preconceived ideas, I challenge them to use the design process to validate that they in fact have identified an idea that will help someone and improve their lives. This validation starts by finding the people who have the problem that they think their idea will solve and empathizing with them. During these interviews, students aren’t allowed to discuss their preconceived ideas with their interviewee. When interviewing for Empathy, we aren’t interested in talking to users about solutions; that comes in the test stage In the Empathy stage, we want to focus on our user’s feelings and needs.

Regardless of which way students approach their interview, preparation is the key to a good interview because Empathy interviewing is a crucial step. It requires skill, discipline, and a process—or it just becomes a conversation. Students may even want to observe, research, and roleplay before an interview to help them make sure they’re asking the right questions. Whenever you or your students plan to conduct an interview, preparation will be the key to success. 

Preparing for an interview

Overtime, we’ve developed an interview preparation process and guide that works for us. Our prep sheet (see resources) helps students break down an interview into four parts. 

1. Introduction, Purpose, then Build Rapport: Students introduce themselves and share the purpose of the interview, and then transition into broad questions they can ask to open the conversation and warm up the interviewee.

• What does your average day look like?
• How would you describe your job? How would your boss describe your job?
• Are you learning anything new?
• How would your kids/significant other describe you?
• What was the best/worst day you had….
• What do you like to do for fun?
• What are some of the biggest challenges you currently face?

2. Dig For Stories and Talk about Feelings: In this section, students ask the user open-ended questions about the topic or problem, and then ask follow up-questions that result in the user telling stories and sharing their feelings about the topic or problem.

• Tell me about an experience…
• What are the best/worst parts about …?
• Can you help me understand about …?
• Walk me through how you . . . (made that decision, completed that task, got to a place, etc.). 
• What were you thinking at that point?
• Why do you say that?
• Tell me more.” 
• How did you feel at that moment, when ____ happened?
• Could you tell me why that is important to you? 
• What emotions do you have (about that)?

3. Clarify and Close: Students wrap up an interview by clarifying anything they still don’t understand and ensure they understand why their problem is still a challenge. They end by thanking their user for their time and finding out when and how would be a good time for a follow-up. 

• Why is this a problem?
• Have you ever tried to solve this problem?
• How many people does this problem affect?
• So if I understand you correctly, you’re saying… 
• When did you realize this was a problem?
• Is there anything we didn’t ask you that you wish we had?

Conducting the interview

Whether my students or I have arranged for the interview, we use our interview prep sheet to conduct the interview. No two interviews are the same, so we focus on best practices when conducting an interview to make the most of our time with our user:

• Record the interview if possible. Audio is good. Video is better. 
• Don’t fill silence. Allow pauses for your user to think and respond thoughtfully.
• Observe the way your user interacts with their environment (body language, tone, emotions, etc).
• Ask “why?” often.

After an interview that has been recorded or during an interview that was unable to be recorded, students will focus on three areas of the interview to take notes on direct quotes, observations, and interesting or surprising things the interviewee said. Students will further unpack the interview later when they create an empathy map.

2. Observation

Observation is an empathy activity that asks students to watch their user interact with their problem in the real world. Students use our observation sheet (see resources) to focus on three key areas of observation: what they see, what they think, and what they feel while watching their user. 

Students can record an observation and break it down later, or they can take notes while they’re in the field. Either way, students are asked to answer the three questions about their user while they are observing them: What are they doing? How are they doing it? Why are they doing it that way? These three questions help students focus on concrete observations and helps them to be more empathetic by imagining what their user is experiencing on a thoughtful and emotional level. 

To get the most out of observing during the Empathy stage, consider assigning a team member with no other responsibilities but to observe throughout the process. 

3. Roleplay

Sometimes we know what problem we want to solve, but can’t find a user to observe or interview. Other times, we may have interviewed and observed our users, but we don’t really understand what they are going through. In both these instances, roleplay can be a great way to get students to walk in their user’s shoes by becoming their user. 

We do two versions of roleplaying. The first way we roleplay is by using a storyboard to think through, sketch out, and then share what our user is going through when they interact with their problem.

The second, and better, way is to actually put yourself in your user’s shoes and interact with their problem or frustration just like they do in real life. Living even a little bit of their experience will always trump imagining it. Whenever I can, I have students experience what their users experience. For example, when we worked with our local hospital to improve the phlebotomy process for kids, I arranged for the head of the department to come in and “take” students’ blood. Minus the actual needle stick, students were put in the chair, swabbed with alcohol, and put through the phlebotomy process by the nurse. After, we had students role play the kids having their blood drawn, the parents controlling their terrified child, and the nurse who has to draw the blood as the child thrashes about. Through this roleplay, students gained a new perspective for each person involved in the process. Undoubtedly, this new understanding for what’s involved in the process allowed students to develop better solutions for improving the phlebotomy process. 

4. Research

Intertwined with the other empathy activities as well as throughout the design process is our research activity. Students use our Know. Want to know. Learned. (KWL) research sheet to help guide them as they try to find answers to questions that come up during the empathy stage. In the first column, students write everything they currently know about their topic. In the second column, they write down the questions they want to answer. The more specific the questions, the more likely they are to be successful. In the last column, students write down what they learned after doing your research. The KWL method works well, even in middle school and high school, and is a great place to start your journey if you are familiar with Project-based learning (PBL) since the KWL sheet lends itself well to the inquiry questions and research needed to launch a traditional PBL project. Often things written on the KWL sheet are adapted into questions or roleplay scenarios.

Adding opportunities for students to gain empathy for a topic or problem by interacting with stakeholders needs to be intentional. I think back to how much better my past lessons could have been if I allowed opportunities for students to work through a problem or topic by connecting them with people who know the problem or topic best, the ones who live it on daily basis.

Until Next Time

GLHF