Empathy methods - IMMERSION.pdf

IMMERSION
MICKEY ANGEL CORTEZ
A report for MMS 150: User Interface and User Experience
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EMPATHY METHODS: IMMERSION
MMS 150: UI AND UX | MICKEY ANGEL CORTEZ
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Immersion: Definition
Advantages and Disadvantages
Tips in Conducting Immersion
Brian Sullivans - "Empathy
Immersion" (Video)
Key Takeaways from the Video
Empathy versus sympathy
Three Interconnected
Empathy Types
Five Go-to Tools for Cultivating
Immersive Empathy
Change Your Perspective
Limit Yourself
Do-It-Yourself
Similar Experience
Day-in-a-Life
How might this method help you
understand potential users more
deeply?

“There’s no better way to understand
the people you’re designing for than by
immersing yourself in their lives and
communities.”
- IDEO Organization -

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND
IMMERSION, LET US REDUCE
IT TO ITS ROOT WORD
Immerse
/i-ˈmərs /
verb:
to plunge into something
that surrounds or covers
especially : to plunge or
dip into a fluid.
Source: Merriam-Webster

Similar to diving in the waters, Immersion in user experience research is exposing oneself into to the actual
environment of the users in order to have first-hand experience of the their journey, struggles, and affordances.

It is the method which perfectly
demonstrates and develops the
essence of empathy, that is, putting
oneself in the shoes of others.
01
ADVANTAGES
WHAT ARE THE
OF EMPLOYING IMMERSION METHOD?
Immersion techniques are used in television and acting in order for
the actors and documentarists to gain enough empathy for the
characters they embody and the subjects they are filming.

METHOD ACTING
Real-life Application
Meryl Streep did a award-winning movie called Sophie’s
Choice. She employed method acting in donning her role. She
actually stayed in Auschwitz, ate the same type of food, did
not have much water, lost 25 pounds and chose between two
two longtime pets that she had. She literally tried to simulate
the primary struggles of her character.
Media Source:
Dick Thomas Johnson
IMDb

KARA DAVID'S
DOCUMENTARIES
Real-life Application
Award-winning journalist and documentarist Kara
David shows a high-level of professionalism and
public service in her i-Witness documentaries. Her
coverage are known for being heartfelt and candid,
which is the result of her immersion to the community
and people whose unique stories and struggles
deserve to be put at the forefront. She gets along with
the locals through eating what they eat and doing
what they do without any traces of hesistation.
Media Source:
GMA Network

Emotional Triggers
02
ADVANTAGES
WHAT ARE THE
Immersion is an emotionally-triggering
method. It allows designers to share the
feelings and emotions of the target users by
actually experiencing them. Sharing these
emotional experiences helps bond and align
colleagues and clients around a common
goal.
Source: Miffy Fiona (2020)

Less assumptions,
more understanding
03
ADVANTAGES
WHAT ARE THE
Empathy experiences gathered in immersion
overcome pre-conceived notions and
assumptions by putting oneself in the shoes
of the people designing for.
Source: Miffy Fiona (2020)

Time-consuming and
Effort-demanding
Remember that If you're going
into the field you'll need travel,
accommodation, and the tools
needed for Interviews. They
come with significant costs.
Costly
DISADVANTAGES
OF EMPLOYING IMMERSION METHOD

Level of difficulty to
execute is harder that
other methods.
DISADVANTAGES
OF EMPLOYING IMMERSION METHOD
Although a few hours
suffice, at least a week
is recommended for
in-depth insights

Tips in conducting
Immersion
As you Create a Project Plan,
budget enough time and
money to send team members
into the field to spend time with
the people you’re designing for.
Try to organize a homestay if
possible.
Be a man with a plan!
Once you’re there, observe as
much as you can. It’s crucial to
record exactly what you see and
hear. It’s easy to interpret what’s
in front of you before you’ve fully
understood it, so be sure you’re
taking down concrete details and
quotes alongside your
impressions.
Be observant
A great Immersion technique is
to shadow a person you’re
designing for for a day. Ask
them all about their lives, how
they make decisions , watch
them socialize, work, and relax.
If you’ve got a shorter window
for Immersion, you can still
learn a lot by following
someone for a few hours. Pay
close attention to the person’s
surroundings. You can learn a
lot from them.
Shadow someone Short on time?
Source: iDEO Org (n.d)

Control the Room 2019 + Brian
Sullivan + Empathy Immersion

Click on the thumbnail to watch the video!

KEY TAKEAWAYS
from Sullivan's talk

“You can’t walk in another person’s
shoes until you take your own shoes off.”
- Scott Cook -
This is basically whole point of immersion!

“Extreme users alert you to the pain points
and new opportunities people have.”
- Jill Ave -
We need to design for extremes, not just the mainstream.
Make the extreme mainstream.

Empathy Sympathy

You get deeper
insights with
emotional empathy.
It also inspires
innovation.
When you observe
people where they
live, work and play,
you are inspired and
you build empathy.
empathy drives
Innovation
Emotional

Case Study
Xilinx kitchen tools were designed with the
involvement of a 5-star chef’s short order cook and
a child who is taking their first cooking lesson. This
has allowed them to create tools operable by
people with arthritis.
XILINX KITCHEN TOOLS

Three Interconnected Empathy Types
There are 20 types of Empathy. These three are interconnected:
Emotional
empathy
Cognitive
Empathy
Compassionate
Empathy

EMOTIONAL
EMPATHY
Connecting at a visceral level with feelings
with another person.
You make that connection at your heart level.
In here, we use emotional immersion.

COGNITIVE
EMPATHY
The heart goes to the head.
In here, we try to understand what we’ve learned.
Example: empathy maps, personas, diary studies

COMPASSIONATE
EMPATHY
You’re compelled to act after feeling and
understanding the problem.
Now, you want to make a change.

IN SHORT...
FEEL PROCESS
ACT

CASE IN POINT
SABRE DESIGN AGENCY
The design team at Sabre had to create an award-winning
accessibility program. None of them are visually impaired or
norhandicapped. Thus, to fully grasp the actual situation of their
users, they were asked to wear glasses that simulate visual
impairment. Some were asked to ride a wheelchair. Some had
their hands wrapped to simulate mobile impairment.

GO-TO TOOLS FOR
CULTIVATING
IMMERSIVE EMPATHY
5

01
Change your
perspective.
Crouch and walk on your knees to know what the world is like from
a child’s vantage point. Identify the difficulties and challenges from
this immersion activity in building a restaurant for kids.
In this case, an interview will not suffice because sometimes, even
users don’t know what their needs are (Arriaga, R. I., & Georgia
Institute of Technology, n.d). Besides, a child might not have the
ability to give accuate self-reports from their perspective due to
the lack of emotional maturity.

02
Limit yourself.
Try to drink or take off the lid of the water bottle
using only three fingers to know what it’s like to do
the simple activities as a person with disability.
In order to understand the physical and emotional challenges that people with
rheumatoid arthritis face, one designer worked with medical staff to take mobility
away from her entire team. Afterwards, they felt depressed and sore. And much
more empathetic about the challenges that even small inconveniences can cause
rheumatoid arthritis patients (Fiona, 2020).
CASE IN POINT

04
Do-It-Yourself
The project is redesigning an emergency room experience for a
hospital. A designer was admitted to an emergency room as a
pseudo-patient. He had a first-hand experience of the frustration,
boredom, an anxiety of the whole admission process. He had a video
camera all along so he can share the whole patient experience with
the whole team. When the video was shown to the hospital staff, they
had a new-found perpective from the daily surroundings they grew
familiar with.
As a result, this immersive empathy exercise allowed Christian and
his team to help the hospital re-think the emergency room patient
experience to be more comforting and easier to navigate.
CASE IN POINT

05
Similar Experience
When there are times when it is quite a feat to immerse
yourself in an actual experience, it pays to get creative by
seeking for analogous ways to understand more.
In designing wound care products, the design team wanted to understand the
experience of taking care of a sensitive skin area. Since it would be tough to
get wounds intentionally, one of the members got his chest waxed and took
care of his afterwards as if he was a person who’s gently tending to a wound.
CASE IN POINT

05
Day-in-a-life
Spending a person’s day in a life (or
shadowing them) will help the
designers truly feel and understand
the recurrent pain points in one’s
daily and occupational activities.
Media Source: The Lettered Classroom

HOW DOES THIS METHOD
HELP YOU UNDERSTAND
POTENTIAL USERS MORE
DEEPLY?
Immersive empathy allows the designers to deeply
resonate with their users by having an actual
experience of their struggles and pain points. It
strips off pre-conceived notions and allows the
designers to have a visceral connection with their
potential users. There are times when asking
questions, analyzing self-reported struggles and
experiences, and observing other people do not
suffice in comprehensively grasping the scenario
and scope of the problem. Immersion fills in these
gaps by giving the designers the opportunity to
experience the situation and struggles first-hand.

HOW DOES THIS METHOD
HELP YOU UNDERSTAND
POTENTIAL USERS MORE
DEEPLY?
Despite its caveats, immersion
is the epitome, if not the very
definition of, empathy.
Empathy
/ ˈem-pə-thē /
noun:
the action of understanding, being aware of, being
sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings,
thoughts, and experience of another.
Source: Merriam-Webster

REFERENCES
Arriaga, R. I., & Georgia Institute of Technology. (n.d.). Core Concepts of UX [Lecture Video]. In Coursera.
Ferguson, D. (2019, December 4). Empathy Immersion. Voltage Control. https://voltagecontrol.com/blog/empathy-immersion/
Fiona, M. (2020, February 16). 4Tips for Empathy Immersion. Medium. https://medium.com/@miffyfiona/4tips-for-empathy-immersion-da21636da89
IDEO Org. (n.d.). Immersion. Design Kit; IDEO Org. Retrieved July 7, 2022, from https://www.designkit.org/methods/immersion
Lucas, F. (2018, October 7). How to Practice Immersive Empathy in Design Thinking. Web Design Envato Tuts+.
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-practice-immersive-empathy-in-design-thinking--cms-31217
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Empathy. In Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Immerse. In Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved July 7, 2022, from https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/immerse
Voltage Control. (2019). Control the Room 2019 + Brian Sullivan + Empathy Immersion [YouTube Video]. In www.youtube.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb5WZpYerFg

GMA Network. (2020). Kara David [Online Image]. In Sunsar. https://www.sunstar.com.ph/ampArticle/1870516
Halleden, K. (2019). a day in the life of a software engineer [YouTube Thumbnail]. In YouTube.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DFW8MwstRwY/maxresdefault.jpg
Interaction Design Foundation. (2020). Design - Empathy - User Venn Diagram [Online Image]. In Medium.
Johnson, D. T. (2016). Meryl Streep from “Florence Foster Jenkins” at Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo International Film
Festival 2016 [Online Image]. In Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Meryl_Streep#/media/File:Meryl_Str
eep_at_the_Tokyo_International_Film_Festival_2016_(32802149674)_(cropped).jpg
The Lettered Classroom. (2017). A Day in the Life of a Teacher [YouTube Thumbnail]. In YouTube.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PuVY4IIuU6g/maxresdefault.jpg
MEDIA

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