Building Empathy: Scaling User Research for Organizational Impact

Auteur-es

Liu, Ariel; Sosik, Victoria Schwanda; Singh, Khadine

Nombre Auteurs

3

Titre

Building Empathy: Scaling User Research for Organizational Impact

Année de publication

2018

Référence (APA)

Liu, A., Sosik, V. S., & Singh, K. (2018). Building Empathy : Scaling User Research for Organizational Impact. Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1‑7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3174352

Mots-clés

Empathy building, usability study, industry research

URL

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3170427.3174352

doi

https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3174352

Accessibilité de l'article

Open access

Champ

Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization

Type contenu (théorique Applicative méthodologique)

Applicative

Méthode

Analysis of survey responses from Google employees

Analyse des impacts du programme PokerFace avec un sondage pré-test et un sondage post-test afin d'évaluer si le fait de suivre le programme Pokerface permet aux participants de développer l'empathie envers les utilisateurs et d'être plus conscients lorsqu'ils évaluent le travail et le produit de leur équipe en termes de besoins de l'utilisateur.

Cas d'usage

Pokerface, an internal program at Google to develop empathy towards users

Objectifs de l'article

The Pokerface program is a Google internal user empathy campaign[…]. Our objective is to increase user awareness with our teams and acknowledge the fact that "we aren’t the users", but by going a step further and putting product teams face to face with their users.

Question(s) de recherche/Hypothèses/conclusion

Research question(s) : While this program was successful, it was somewhat limited in scope. It was successful in reaching over 400 Googlers from more than 6 sites, but this time4 years later–our goals were much larger, targeting more than 1500 Googlers in 15 offices across the world. The increased complexity of our project brought along many additional challenges which we will discuss in this case study. In this iteration of the program we also executed a more thorough evaluation of the program’s impact, which we did not do in 2012 and which we will also report on here.
This same set of questions was also asked in the post-survey in order to evaluate whether completing the Pokerface program allows participants build user empathy and be more aware when evaluating their team’s work and product in terms of user needs.

Hypothesis(es) : The Pokerface program is intended to build user empathy among Googlers in hopes that this empathy will translate to more awareness of an adherence to Google’s design principles.

Conclusion(s) : Project Pokerface was a Google internal user empathy campaign that encouraged user-involvement as part of the product development cycle. We saw that scaling such a program across a large organization of over 1500 employees across 15 sites brought about challenges, however our evaluation showed success, as the program helped our teams worldwide break preconceived perceptions, develop new perspectives, and build more empathy for users and confidence in user-centered research.

Cadre théorique/Auteur.es

User involvement throughout the innovation process (Bosch-Sijtsema et Bosch, 2015)

Concepts clés

Empathy towards users

Données collectées (type source)

Responses to a survey of Google employees (engineers, product managers, designers, analysts and program managers)
In order to measure impact [of the program], we ran 2 sets of surveys: one pre-survey sent to participants to complete upon sign-up for the program (but before starting the program), and one post-survey sent to participants to complete shortly after completing the program. The survey is intended to measure participants’ attitudes toward Google’s user centered design principles. The pre-survey was sent to all participants and asked them to rate their agreement (on a 5-point bipolar, ordinal Agreement scale) with a set of questions/constructs. This same set of questions was also asked in the post-survey in order to evaluate whether completing the Pokerface program allows participants build user empathy and be more aware when evaluating their team’s work and product in terms of user needs.

Définition des émotions

No definition

Ampleur expérimentation (volume de comptes)

1500 Googler participants at ten locations worldwide, including engineers, product managers, designers, analysts, and program managers. Of the >1500 participants, >900 participants completed both pre- and post-surveys.

Technologies associées

ND

Mention de l'éthique

Pokerface: The day of

After scripts have been prepared, participants take part in a one-hour seminar with a researcher where they learn the basic dos and don’ts of running a usability study and have a lesson in research ethics.
We ran the Pokerface program with more than 1500 Googler participants. In order to avoid bias in our survey responses, we made sure that every participant was aware that the surveys were anonymous and were not part of any team or personal evaluation. We also did not reveal the overall survey results until the teams had completed the program to ensure that the results did not influence individual responses.

Finalité communicationnelle

Research has shown that user involvement throughout the entire innovation process has been a key to success in many high-tech firms [3]. Feedback from users has helped companies uncover key user needs as well as understand how users accomplish critical journeys with products.

The Pokerface program is intended to build user empathy among Googlers in hopes that this empathy will translate to more awareness of an adherence to Google’s design principles.

The program helped our teams worldwide break preconceived perceptions, develop new perspectives, and build more empathy for users and confidence in user-centered research.

Résumé

Building user empathy in a tech organization is crucial to ensure that products are designed with an eye toward user needs and experiences. The Pokerface program is a Google internal user empathy campaign with 26 researchers that helped more than 1500 employees-including engineers, product managers, designers, analysts, and program managers across more than 15 sites-have first-hand experiences with their users. Here, we discuss the goals of the Pokerface program, some challenges that we have faced during execution, and the impact we have measured thus far.