There is one tool - the empathy interview - I seem to be getting many questions about lately and so I thought it to be the perfect time to write about it in today’s newsletter.
What is an empathy interview?
An empathy interview is a bit like sitting down with a friend and having a conversation to really understand what they're going through, except in our context, it's part of the design thinking discovery process. Imagine you're designing a new park. In an empathy interview, you wouldn't just ask people if they'd like a pond or a picnic area. You'd dig deeper, asking about their experiences at parks in the past, what they enjoyed, what problems they faced, and how they felt about those experiences. This helps you understand not just what they want, but why they want it, enabling you to design a park that they'll like and use.
When embracing a human-centered design approach in HR, our goal is to solve problems in a way that's focused on the people we're designing for. So, an empathy interview is a special kind of conversation where we talk to the people who might use the solution we're creating. The key here is to remain humble and to listen deeply. We're not just asking our employees for their opinions on a new program or service. Instead, we're trying to walk in their shoes (while being mindful of the fact that we can never fully comprehend another person’s lived experience). We want to understand their feelings, challenges, and needs. It's like being a detective of emotions and experiences, gathering clues that will help us design a solution that truly makes others’ work lives better.
Employees love being involved in these types of conversations. I often hear from participants that this was the first time they had been asked for their perspective and that it made them feel heard.
What does an empathy interview entail?
To prepare for an empathy interview, we first need to define what we hope to glean from it. When it comes to empathy interview question design, we distinguish between research questions (what we want to learn) and interview questions (the actual questions we want to ask interview partners to elicit stories that illustrate what we want to learn). The reason that we take that approach is because if we ask people our research questions, they will speculate about their behavior and resulting solutions which make them less reliable data points. Empathy interviews guided by story-based questions help us to uncover latent needs.
When do you use empathy interviews?
Empathy interviews are a versatile method which I apply to pretty much any employee experience context. I find these conversations especially impactful when helping key stakeholders to immerse themselves in empathy. For example, I have employed a simplified version of the method as pre-work for executive workshops on how to re-imagine their post-pandemic work strategy. The empathy interviews provided leaders with insights they needed to make human-centered decisions, and the employees felt valued because the executive team cared about their input.
[Note: This article was originally published as part of the Design Thinking for HR LinkedIn Newsletter.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Design Thinking for HR is a biweekly LinkedIn newsletter that aims to inspire HR professionals to experiment with the human-centered design framework. The newsletter is curated by Nicole Dessain, a talent management leader and founder of the human-centered transformation consultancy talent.imperative and the HR.Hackathon Alliance. Nicole is currently writing her first book about Design Thinking for HR. Join the Early Readers’ Community here.