Identifying Users and Conducting Empathy Interviews #designchallenge
Alrighty, so I'm beginning my design project with the first step of the design thinking process: building empathy.
Designers have to understand the problem they're trying to solve, observe the physical environment of the dilemma in order to personally understand the experiences and motivations of the people involved, and ultimately see through the point of view of their users.
"Empathy-building is a critical step in design thinking;
it's what makes the process human-centered."
Ideally, the users that I'd be designing for in this design challenge would be both students and teachers. However, because of the limited time frame, I'm going to have to scale it down to just teachers.
Since I do want to follow the design thinking process for this project, I'm going to be conducting several empathy interviews, to really get down to the nitty gritty of what I'm designing for.
Empathy Interview Questions (teacher version):
Tell me about your most memorable learning environment.
What would be your ideal learning environment? For you as well as your students? Could you sketch a picture of it?
Is there anything that you couldn't sketch - tangible or intangible - that you feel should be in it?
Are there any forces that hold you back?
If those forces weren't there, if you had no restrictions or requirements, how would you structure your classroom?
When you first decided to become a teacher, what was your dream persona? What kind of teacher did you want to become? Can you synthesize that into a character that's like your dream persona? What would he be like? Can you sketch a picture?
How does that learning environment influence you as a teacher today? You teaching styles, etc.
Within the classroom, what's a favorite learning moment that you had in your current classroom as a teacher?
What do you think gave rise to that moment? Was it the plan/curriculum, the content, the student?
