Often, articles and guides focused on user-centricity are written for designers. But software developers and engineers also benefit when they’re able to empathize with users.
Engineers who take the time to really understand their users will:
Here are three easy steps to better understand your users:
1. Meet them!Not on a whiteboard. Not through the megaphone of your sales VP. We’re talking real life.
It‘s an eye-opening experience to meet the people for whom you are trying to solve problems every day.
An empathy map is an effective tool for immersing yourself in your users’ perspective. This can be done in addition to or instead of actually meeting your users (though there’s no real replacement for that).
This exercise is ideally performed with a group that includes a few people familiar with users. The goal is to build out a vision of the physical and emotional environment of an example user you are trying to better understand. On a big piece of paper, draw the following diagram:
Next, brainstorm to fill in details about a specific user profile. These details are meant to answer the following questions:
Once it’s filled in, keep the empathy map posted near you in a place that’s easily viewable when you find yourself uncertain about how to proceed in your project. It’s like a reminder to always ask yourself WWUW: What would the user want?
3. Engage in user acceptance testingOften, user acceptance testing happens outside of the world of engineers, resulting in last-minute changes that are squeezed into the sprint to satisfy newly uncovered needs.
When possible, involve yourself in these sessions. This is a part of what should be a normal workflow involving end-users. Join in for this step to see and hear for yourself how the user is interacting with your newly finished product.
This could have many different, beneficial outcomes:
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The above tasks are things that any designer or product manager should regularly be doing. One simple recommendation is to ask your designer and/or product manager to help you with your user empathy.
Ask them to arrange an interview with a user or to lead an empathy mapping session with the team. Ask them to invite you to the UAT meeting or when they go on a house visit to do some user research.
You don’t need to do everything these roles do, but doing just enough to really understand your users will go a long way for your effectiveness, value, and professional future as a software engineer.