Maire Cleary

The Challenge

Understanding why change matters and why now is the right time for change is important for success. However, when you want to mobilse stakeholders it's not just what you say but how you say it that impacts how others connect with your vision. Humanising the people you're designing for and telling captivating stories from their perspective will help grow empathy and emotional engagement.

My Role

Story Teller | Design Strategist | Facilitator

The Process

Step 1: Introduce personas

• Introduce personas and tell stories from their perspective, showing them as people with rich emotional lives and divergent needs
  
• Use their tone and narrative and use audio visual when available
  

Step 2: Map user journeys

Bring experiences to life with rich journeys that illustrate what matters most. If Design Thinking or a human-centred approach is new then make sure they know what a journey map is and is not (not a process map or a set of actions for example).

Here's an example of an exercise I've done that has worked well:

• Ask teams to map out their commute to work, step-by-step
  
• Then ask them to reflect on what they were thinking and feeling at key steps. E.g. did they miss a train? What impact did this have on their emotions - frustration, anxiety about being late?
  
• What did they do next? (e.g. buy a coffee while they waited?)
  

The point here is that you want people thinking about the whole experience - doing, thinking and feeling, rather than just robotic steps.

Step 3: Tell stories that resonate

Make sure teams identify with the people they're designing for. If you really want the story to really resonate spending time with team to review findings, listen to audio and co-map journey is time well-spent.

This will help the team uncover the moments that really matter and start to get a clear understanding of the differences between nuisances (low points), pain or barriers to loyalty.

Growing empathy is continuous. Hooking people in early will help encourage engagement from the start.

Watch this 2 minute video explainer on how to go from user feedback to mobilising action.