Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business

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Business satisfaction with IT is low.
IT and the business have independently evolving strategy, initiatives, and objectives.
IT often exceeds their predicted project costs and has difficulty meeting the business’ expectations of project quality and time-to-market.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Business needs are unclear or ambiguous.
IT and the business do not know how to leverage each other’s talent and resources to meet their common goals.
Not enough steps are taken to fully understand and validate problems.
IT can’t pivot fast enough when the business’s needs change.

Impact and Result

Product, service, and process design should always start with an intimate understanding of what the business is trying to accomplish and why it is important.

Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should apply experience design to partner with the business, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business – Executive Brief

1. Research

Identify goals and objectives for experience design, establish targeted stakeholders, and conduct discovery interviews.

2. Map and iterate

Create the journey map, design a research study to validate your hypotheses, and iterate and ideate around a refined, data-driven understanding of stakeholder problems.

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$38,999

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World Food Programme

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Workshop: Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Introduction to Journey Mapping

The Purpose

Understand the method and purpose of journey mapping.

Key Benefits Achieved

Initial understanding of the journey mapping process and the concept of end-user empathy.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Introduce team and discuss workshop motivations and goals.

1.2

Discuss overview of journey mapping process.

1.3

Perform journey mapping case study activity.

Case Study Deliverables – Journey Map and Empathy Maps

Module 2: Persona Creation

The Purpose

Begin to understand the goals and motivations of your stakeholders using customer segmentation and an empathy mapping exercise.

Key Benefits Achieved

Understand the demographic and psychographic factors driving stakeholder behavior.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Discuss psychographic stakeholder segmentation.

2.2

Create empathy maps for four segments.

Stakeholder personas

2.3

Generate problem statements.

2.4

Identify target market.

Target market of IT

Module 3: Interview Stakeholders and Start a Journey Map

The Purpose

Get first-hand knowledge of stakeholder needs and start to capture their perspective with a first-iteration journey map.

Key Benefits Achieved

Capture the process stakeholders use to solve problems and empathize with their perspectives, pains, and gains.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Review discovery interviewing techniques.

Customized discovery interview template

3.2

Review and modify the discovery questionnaire

Results of discovery interviewing

3.3

Demonstrate stakeholder interview.

3.4

Synthesize learnings and begin creating a journey map.

Module 4: Complete the Journey Map and Create a Research Study

The Purpose

Hypothesize the stakeholder journey, identify assumptions, plan a research study to validate your understanding, and ideate around critical junctures in the journey.

Key Benefits Achieved

Understand the stakeholder journey and ideate solutions with the intention of improving their experience with IT.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Finish the journey map.

Completed journey map for one IT process, product, or service

4.2

Identify assumptions and create hypotheses.

4.3

Discuss field research and hypothesis testing.

4.4

Design the research study.

Research study design and action plan

4.5

Discuss concluding remarks and next steps.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Research

Call 1: Establish a design team.
Call 2: Create customer personas and identify a target market.
Call 3: Develop an interview questionnaire.

Guided Implementation 2: Map and iterate

Call 1: Develop a first-iteration journey map.
Call 2: Plan a research study.
Call 3: Test your hypotheses.
Call 4: Analyze the journey and ideate solutions.

Authors

Michael Blair

MaryAnn Welke

Contributors

Alana Boltwood, Certified Management Consultant at Metimea Inc.
Goran Matic, Enterprise Data Governance Lead at Gamma Dynacare Medical Laboratories
Rogene Sears, Acting CIO at California Department of State Hospitals
Brady Thompson, Information and IT Architect at Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services