EMPATHIZE

Now is the time to make sure you know what the ideal outcome for the user looks like. 

 

Get the cross-functional team together again to review existing data like competitive analysis and customer requests to understand where we have questions around user needs, pain points, objectives, stressors and other facets that are important to the user in the context of your idea. Sometimes, we are pretty confident we can start designing when a solution fits into an existing, well-understood user and workflow. Other times, like when we are working to solve new problems or old problems in new ways, it is very beneficial to regroup and prepare to empathize.

 

It's so important to include various roles such as developers and product managers along with designers in this because each will have unique information they are looking for that the others may not be able to see in the same way.  You will take these questions and prepare a script and recruit participants so that you can conduct interviews and build a majority viewpoint which you can bring back to the teams in the form of new or updated user personas, user journey maps and MLP concepts.