Posted by Jutta Goldammer from Visionautik Akademie

SHORT DESCRIPTION

In order to really understand a situation including the thoughts, needs, problems and hopes of the people you are innovating for, one of the easiest and most direct ways is to talk to them. Empathic interviews are a gentle and effective way to do that.

ALTERNATIVE NAME OF THE METHOD

Interview

 BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

“'Kindly let me help you or you will drown,' said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree." --Alan Watts

In this short example you see that a good intention for helping is often not enough. Real solutions require clarity about what exactly is the core of the problem, how the problem is interwoven with other stakeholders and what the real needs or already lived best practice are. So a big part of innovating is about understanding the situation and asking the right questions to find good solutions that bring real benefit.
Empathic interviews help find out about that in an easy way, supporting connection and trust towards the people you design for and with. Empathic interviews are not meant to be used for statistics or scientific studies, therefore they don't need to be precise or representative. They are led with curiosity and the wish to get to know your interviewee, to understand their lives and very subjective perspectives.

Empathic interviews are
-a great start for a social innovation challenge;
-a wonderful source of inspiration for new ideas;
-a way to build up trust and connections; and
-open up your social innovation project for participation of the beneficiaries, which is highly empowering for them.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

It seems common good to me, it is being used a lot in Design Thinking, but I cannot trace it back to the first person having worked with it.

 STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

PRE-EXERCISES

Exercises that help to get into a deep connection with someone else (e.g. "eye gazing portraits") are a good preparation, but not necessary -- you can also start right away.
It is helpful, though, to set a clear intention about the higher purpose of your research. You can do that by
-dedicating the exercise to a purpose you name or
-making everyone form one sentence to what their personal intention is during the workshop or
-giving deeper into personal intention as described in the method "intention setting"

PREPARATION (excluding materials)

-Make sure to be clear about the purpose for the interview. Why do you want your group to contact others and find out about them? It is perfectly fine to use empathic interviews just for a first impression of a topic. Nevertheless the clearer the purpose is to everyone the easier you can use and integrate the collected material later on. (Just make sure that you don't unnecessarily narrow your perception by your preassumptions).

-Have either a few guiding questions prepared and written down on a flipchart or commonly collect helpful questions with the group after their briefing. Make sure your group sees the question just as an inspiration and encourage your group to be with their interviewees in the very moment and not give too much attention to the prepared questions. But sometimes prepared questions help to get started or have a general feel for the field in which they move.

-Depending on the target group you are planning to interview, it might be necessary to prearrange meetings. We had good experiences by just spontaneously asking people on the street or in the park -- people our participants met randomly. This allows more ease and spontaneity in the conversation than a prepared and prearranged session. But of course that only works with some target groups/topics.

1 Brief the group

2 Swarm out and lead interviews

HARVEST

Ask your participants to choose one colour of post-it for each person they interviewed. On one post-it they should write the name of the person they interviewed (if they don't know the name they invent one). Let them write three or four short basic insights or quotes from that person on post-its of the same colour. One quote per post-it. Encourage them to make it concrete but no longer than "This park is like a home to me, I sit here every afternoon to knit and talk with the neighbours, even in winter." or "I always buy coffee in to-go cups as they give me the freedom to leave the café any time". Remind your participants to use one post-it for each quote.
Print out the photos.
Then gather the group and let them share their insights by sticking their post-its on the pinboard. One row, one person with their quotes and the photo. Then the next row (preferably shared by another team to best keep the energy going by shifting between sharing and listening).

 FURTHER INFORMATION

Trainers for this method can be hired here: