Your team is a slick machine that has no problem shipping, but how do you create a team with shared empathetic vision? From brainstorming to scenarios, sketching, and personas; we’ll take a look at ways to help your team become more aligned in how they think about participant-centered design.

1. Fostering Empathy in
Collaborative Development
Lauren Johnson

2. What is empathetic design?
empathic? word fight!

3. Empathetic
Design
challenges assumptions
thinks about context
understands motivation
considers emotions
checks privilege

4. Why does empathy matter?

5. Empathy
helps you identify with your
audience
provides a common touch point
for collaboration
creates participant-centered
designs

6. “PEOPLE WHO CANNOT TEMPORARILY LET GO OF
THEIR ROLE OR STATUS OR SET ASIDE THEIR
OWN EXPERTISE OR OPINION WILL FAIL TO
EMPATHIZE WITH OTHERS WHO HAVE
CONFLICTING THOUGHTS, EXPERIENCES, OR
MENTAL MODELS.”
From Empathy on the Edge, IDEO

7. How do you introduce
empathy to create a shared
vision?

8. You need to
understand

9. You need to
understand

10. You need to
understand

11. You need to
understand

12. Understanding yourself

13. Start with You
who are you in relation to your
audience?
who are you in relation to your
team?

14. MBTI activities
MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) can
provide some insight into your inherent
behaviors and personality.
Complete your own MBTI profile (www.
16personalities.com is a good tool)
Write an analysis of your MBTI in relation to
how you think about your audience, and how
you position yourself within a creative team.
What strengths do you see reflected? What
are your weaknesses?
I’m INFJ-A
(The Advocate)
This makes it easy for
me to understand
different perspectives,
but it makes it hard for me to accept
criticism and be resilient.
Knowing this helps me keep it in check.

15. Understanding your team

16. Next: Your Team
how does your MBTI impact the
way you collaborate?
how can you negotiate
personality differences?

17. MBTI activities
Have your team complete their MBTI profiles,
and then create teams based on their
profiles.
Have them do rapid prototyping /
collaboration activities.
Do two iterations, one with teams made of
similar/complementary profiles, and another
with teams made of competing / conflicting
profiles.
Sample Activities:
The Marshmallow Challenge
Monuments
Newspaper Tower

18. MBTI activities
Complementary Personality Types:
● Analysts: INTJ, INTP, ENTJ, ENTP
● Diplomats: INFJ, INFP, ENFJ, ENFP
● Sentinels: ISTJ, ISFJ, ESTJ, ESFJ
● Explorers: ISTP, ISFP, ESTP, ESFP
Opposing Personality Types:
● FP (feeling-perceiving) vs. TJ (thinking-judging)
● Introverts vs. Extroverts
● Thinking vs. Feeling
● Perceiving vs. Judging
● Sensing vs. Intuition

22. Strangest & Most Unusual
Empathy starts in house. Get an understanding about the people you work
with, beyond the basics. Play “Strangest & Most Unusual.”
1. Split into teams of two.
2. Teams have 10 minutes to take turns finding out the strangest and most
unusual thing about their partner.
3. Partners cannot offer up facts - they can only answer questions.
4. It’s up to you to decide what questions to ask, and when you are satisfied
that you have the strangest and most unusual fact about your partner.
5. Each person will present the fact about their partner. At the end, use an
“applause meter” to gauge what is the strangest & most unusual fact.

23. Understanding your
audience

24. Next: Your User
who are they?
who are they REALLY?
what do they care about?
what do they want to
accomplish?
what is their context?

25. User Stories
User Stories allow you to focus on tasks by chaining them together as a
narrative of functionality. They follow the same basic formula:
As a ____________________, I want to ______________________________.
or
As a _______________, I want to ________________ because __________.

26. User Stories
User Stories allow you to focus on tasks by chaining them together as a
narrative of functionality. They follow the same basic formula:
As a customer, I want to change my shipping address.
or
As a customer, I want to change my password because I can’t
remember it.

27. User Stories
User Stories have levels of granularity. They can be “epics”:
As a student, I want to register for classes online.
Which are then broken down into smaller component user stories:
● As a student, I want to see course offerings.
● As a student, I want to sort courses by day.
● As a student, I want to sort courses by time.
● As a student, I want to sort courses by availability.
● As a student, I want to view course prerequisites.
● etc.

28. Empathy Mapping
Empathy mapping helps you think about the context of your user. They are
broken down into four components: thinking, hearing, seeing, feeling.
A moderator can help, but is not necessary. They can provide cues to help
your own thought process, such as:
● what does this person do in a typical day?
● what frustrates them?
● when engages them?
● where are they when they use your product / service?
● what are they trying to accomplish?

31. Paula White, tfk.gov.uk

32. Exquisite Corpse Personas
“Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original
French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a
collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each
collaborator adds to a composition in sequence…
The technique was invented by surrealists and is similar to an old
parlour game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a
sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to
the next player for a further contribution.” [thx, Wikipedia!]

33. Le Cadavre Exquis
Yves Tanguy
Man Ray
Max Morise
Joan Miro
1926

34. Exquisite Corpse Personas
Start with a basic persona template on a sheet of paper. This typically
includes name, occupation, location, short biography, motivations, needs,
and a scenario.
With your basic audience defined, pass the paper around the room between
team members. Each member gets 90 seconds to add / edit / remove any
content they would like before passing it on.
The final member finds an image to represent the persona.
Variation: have multiple sheets of paper in circulation for different audience
segments.

35. Persona Role Playing
Using the persona generated by Exquisite Corpse, or existing personas, split
into small teams of 2-3 people.
One team member assumes the role of the persona, answering questions in
the manner they believe to be true to that persona.
Focus mainly on investigatory, interview style questions. Stay away from
user testing & prototyping testing. This exercise isn’t meant to identify
design flaws, but to get you to think more about your audience and what
motivates them.

36. Understanding your project

37. Next: Your
Project
what is it?
what can it be?
why is it useful?
why is it needed?
how is it perceived?

38. Value Treasure Hunt
● Everyone assumes a different identity of their audience (bonus: wear nametags
with your assumed name and role).
○ Why? This brings everyone’s opinions to the same value - departments,
titles, and personal intention are subtracted.
● Use a whiteboard, or large rolls of paper. Give each person a marker.
● Start with boxes and headings - why is it useful? or not? why is it necessary? or
not? how does it add value? or not? You can create your own headings, or use
these as a starting point. The focus should be exploring / defining the value.
● Fill out these areas assuming the role of audience member
● Add additional columns / areas as ANYONE sees fit.

39. Affinity Diagram
An affinity diagram helps you organize content generated from a
brainstorming activity (like Value Treasure Hunt).
● Organize ideas under headings, into clusters
● Show connections between concepts
● Order priorities or create hierarchies to show importance
● Summarize into an actionable plan

42. Product Persona
Flip persona methods onto your product or service. If it was a person, what would it be like?
Personality Profile: a few (5-7) adjectives to describe the personality of your product / service
Origin Story: why does your product / service exist? What would this look like as a comic origin
story?
Voice: Casual? Formal? Irreverent? Soothing? What is the tone and verbal style?
Image: Manifest your product / service in a visual format. Don’t use your logo. Do use pictures of
real people, illustrations, or emoji.
Copy: Include text that reflects reactions, tweets, favorite sayings, statements.
Heavily inspired by Aarron Walter’s A List Apart article, Personality in Design

45. Hey, thanks! Questions?