In any endeavor, empathizing with the end user is fundamental to understanding what contributes most to their experience and how happy they are with you and what you are providing. User feedback can only be fully understood in the context of understanding what the user is feeling and what they want. In my practice empathy interview, I tried to focus heavily upon understanding feelings and reactions to events. My interviewee, Megan Schubert, had a very up-and-down experience with COVID, which I was able to get a better understanding of because of the interview process. She started very happy and “hyped” about getting additional time off school, but soon came to feel the impact of isolation and plans being cancelled. She described it as almost a sort of emotional whiplash, going from a relatively high point where she was joking around with friends about the time off, to soon not being able to see those friends, possibly for a long time. She was very animated the whole time, and passionate about the things she believed in (such as supporting mask mandates).

Of course, this interview was preparation for a slightly more daunting one–a real empathy interview with my partner company, Corral. It’s especially important that those are done well, as they will enable our team to greater understand the issues facing their company daily. In an empathy interview, even though we of course wish our clients are doing well, we must seek out and find those parts of their work that are less enjoyable. By locating these minimum points on the graph, we can identify what most needs to be improved for employee and client satisfaction, and by extension, what our team will be doing over the course of our partnership with the company.

In these interviews, it’s important to come up with questions beforehand, but in all honesty, I believe that the most important questions are ones that can only be crafted on the spot. By first listening to and understanding what is going on with a client’s workflow, only then can you start to identify the things that they are less excited about, and then go on to ask specific probing questions. Though, it should be noted that you should avoid getting too specific about drilling into “physical/practical” details unless if they are strictly needed–those are good for other types of reviews, but in an empathy interview, the primary focus should always be on how the client feels.