Page 75 - The Design Thinking Playbook

HOW MIGHT WE...

experience, understand, and feel EXPERIENCE THE WORLD
OF THE CUSTOMER
like the customer?

Instead of endlessly speculating on users’ everyday situations, it is far more instructive for us to experience
them ourselves. This way, critical facts crystallize that can serve as starting points for innovations. But be
careful: We experience only a fraction of them.
UNDERSTAND
THE LANGUAGE OF
THE CUSTOMER How can we experience the world of the customer?
To recognize critical needs, we adopt the perspective of the user. This requires empathy. Our own thought
patterns and principles can inhibit us, because we innovate not for ourselves but for the user. In an authen-
Misunderstandings are often based on everyday problems. Depending tic environment and with empathy, the world can be experienced through the eyes of those people who
on many aspects such as family background, lifestyle, values, and will use our product or service day after day.
context, people think and act in the most varied ways. Perceiving
these nuances from the start gives us insights into the lives of our
users that constitute the cornerstones of successful innovations.
POLLO EFFECT/
How can we better understand the language of the customer? HAVING AN OPEN MIND
We listen actively and ask about words that can be understood in
different ways. For example, what do we mean when we speak of
“resources”? The word might refer to time, material, or even people.
We can only know what our interlocutor means if we have him None of us wants to ask naive questions, which cause other people to roll their eyes. We might speak of
explain it to us. the “pollo” effect in this context (pollo is Spanish for chicken). None of us wants to volunteer to be the
If we observe some conspicuous theatrics, the time has come to chicken; however, this is often necessary to immerse oneself in the world of the user. Dare to ask questions
dig deeper. If our interlocutor talks about an “incredibly exciting” because there are no naive questions.
situation, for instance, but rolls his eyes at the same time—what
does it mean? We should always ask, “We could see how you rolled How do we manage to keep an open mind?
your eyes. What did you mean?” From our experience, we know that a It is important to ask questions with an open mind and put our personal experiences and values to the side
better understanding of the customer’s language and personality also as much as possible.
results in a better understanding of his need. The best approach is to imagine that we are aliens in this world, apprentices from a strange galaxy. We
have never been here before and we don’t know how people live here. Our lives are completely different,
and everything we hear is new and inexplicable to us. As friendly extraterrestrial beings, we try to ask
users questions in a nonbiased way. This way, we discover their world and their behavior as if it were
completely new. As one would expect, the statements of the respondents are more differentiated this way
because the role of apprentice is not threatening to the interviewee. On the contrary, in our experience,
74 curiosity motivates potential users to tell us even more.