The power of empathy:
Creating a shared vision and improving a complex system
MSB – a confidential project. I’ll share how we reached our goals, no details included.
- BackgroundMSB, Sweden’s agency for public safety and crisis management, runs a system for two main user groups. It’s complex, with multiple services that help users handle emergencies. This project focused on one of those.
- ProblemUpdates had been made. But it was a bit unclear if these changes met all user needs. And the knowledge of the two user groups were uneven.
- GoalWe needed a clear plan for the service that worked for both user groups. We aimed to show the team and stakeholders how user research can lead to smarter decisions and better updates.
- My taskI was asked to do a needs analysis about the service to fill in the gaps.
The result
Discover phase
How did we make this happen?
Let's take it from the beginning...
Doing my research
This project was like solving a giant puzzle.
But I love a challenge.
I spent the first two weeks defining what we needed. I studied the company structure and team roles. I got to know the system's features and user experience. I also researched the complex role of a user group to prepare for future interviews.
This project was complex. So I asked a lot of questions along the way. It’s better to ask than risk going down the wrong path.
My research included
- Talking to stakeholders about their vision for the service and system
- Understanding the team's strengths and dynamics
- Testing the whole system
- Reading reports and news about the system and company
- Looking into past initiatives and research
- Studying the competition and seeing what other systems did it right and wrong
- Reading articles, job descriptions and documents on the user groups professional roles
- Look for potential uncovered users in the second user group
- Creating a hypothetical user flow of the service
I now felt comfortable enough to dig deeper. What do we think we know about the users?
User research
It was time to listen to users and see if we were right about them
Interviews
We quickly realised this project could be much bigger than we thought.
Define phase
The insights showed that we could improve the service
and system if we addressed the four categories
Key take aways
I made empathy building material
To get everyone on board, we had to build empathy for users. I wanted them to see the real people behind the data. Here's what I did.
- Personas of the two user groups with all their needs, challenges and goals.
- Empathy maps to show users feelings.
- The storyboard that highlighted an important finding.
Creating a clear path forward
Now we needed to see if the vision of the service was aligned with user needs. To find out, we set up two workshops. One with stakeholders and one with users, where stakeholders could listen and ask questions. We gave them similar scenarios to compare so we could see if their visions matched. If not, it could open up a conversation.
First workshop with stakeholders
The activities
1. Get their attention
I showed them the storyboard. It got everyone to pause and reflect.
In retrospect, I feel that this was the spark that started the process of
redefining the systems goal.
2. Understand users
We shared personas and empathy maps.
3. Think like users
We used a scenario to help stakeholders think from the user's perspective.
Then we asked them to think about their potential actions.
While we discussed these, we created a storyboard that visualised this.
It was harder than we all thought. There were a lot of factors to be aware of.
4. Helping users
We discussed how the system can support users.
We created "how might we" questions to focus on finding solutions.
Seize every opportunity.
That’s where real change happens.
A bump in the road
After the workshop, we summed up the "How might we..." questions into three problem statements. One was complex but was the core to improving the service. The stakeholders thought it was too big to handle right away.
They wanted to talk more with key people before we had another workshop. But we knew hearing users echo the research could change their minds.
Then we found out about another user meeting. A teammate suggested having a mini-workshop there, and the stakeholders agreed!
Second workshop with users
We set up the workshop to start conversations and help users share their thoughts and experiences easily.
Develop phase
The users mentioned insights we’d previously found. This helped us gain trust from the stakeholders, and they gave us a green light to explore solutions.
A vision-oriented design
The solution ideas had to balance business goals with user needs. So we mapped out behavioural profiles from the effect map, guided by the personas. These profiles show how users behave differently depending on the situation. To make sure we captured every important detail, I took a look at the research again.
We prepared for the big workshop
We created new solution ideas. We grouped them into six different concepts. Then we planned a workshop where we would gather the whole team and stakeholders to prioritize them. As UX designers, we needed to show their importance clearly. We needed to be prepared. So before the workshop, we discussed their risks and difficulties. We also looked at how they depended on each other to reach their full potential.
The big workshop
Bringing concepts to life
Sketching with inspiration
My teammate and I pulled inspiration from other services and sketched it out. It felt great to get those ideas on paper!
Voting and prototyping
We shared our sketches with the team. We discussed them and voted on which ones to turn into prototypes. This helped us pick the most solid ideas and keep everyone on the same page. Then we designed prototypes in Figma.
Accessibility
The design had to work for situational impairments. We kept it simple to reduce mental overload.
Affective usability testing
We tested the prototypes with four users. One more test would have given us a more reliable result. We looked for specific feelings and how easy it was for them to use the design. We also ran an A/B test to see which version was clearest.
Can we build it?
We checked with the developers to make sure the features were possible to build.
