CWW Tech Africa Week 2

CWW TECH AFRICA
• PRODUCT DESIGN
• Empathize
• DESIGN
• IDEATE
Start the UX Design Process: Empathize,
Design and Ideate (Week 2)
Topic 1: Design thinking process
Topic 2: UX research method
Topic 3: Empathy and creating

Empathy maps user persona
Affinity maps
Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Design and Ideate
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process

that teams use to understand users, challenge
assumptions, redefine problems and create
innovative solutions to prototype and test.
Involving five phases—Empathize, Define,
Ideate, Prototype and Test—it is most useful to
tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.
Why is Design Thinking Important
In user experience (UX) design, it’s crucial to develop and refine skills to understand
and address rapid changes in users, environments and behaviors. Professionals from a
variety of fields, including doctors and psychologist, subsequently advanced this
highly creative process to address human needs in the modern age. Twenty-first-
century organizations from a wide range of industries find design thinking a valuable
means to problem-solve for the users of their products and services. Design teams
use design thinking to tackle ill-defined/unknown problems (aka wicked problems)
because they can reframe these in human-centric ways and focus on what’s most
important for users. Of all design processes, design thinking is almost certainly the
best for “thinking outside the box”. With it, teams can do better UX
research, prototyping and usability testing to uncover new ways to meet users’ needs.
STAGES OF DESIGN THINKING

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs

Here, you should gain an empathetic understanding of
the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through
user research. Empathy is crucial to a human-centered
design process such as design thinking because it allows
you to set aside your own assumptions about the world
and gain real insight into users and their needs.
Start the UX Design Process:
Empathize, Design and Ideate
Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and Problems

It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the
Empathize stage. You then analyze your observations and
synthesize them to define the core problems you and your team
have identified. These definitions are called problem statements.
You can create personas to help keep your efforts human-centered
before proceeding to ideation.
Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of

knowledge from the first two phases means you can start to “think
outside the box”, look for alternative ways to view the problem and
identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve
created. Brainstorming is particularly useful here..
Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions
This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best

possible solution for each problem found. Your team should
produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or
specific features found within the product) to investigate the ideas
you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.
Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out
Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final

phase, design thinking is iterative: Teams often use the results to
redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to
previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and
refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions.
Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out
Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final

phase, design thinking is iterative: Teams often use the results to
redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to
previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and
refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions.
Overall, you should understand that these stages are

different modes which contribute to the entire design
project, rather than sequential steps. Your goal
throughout is to gain the deepest understanding of the
users and what their ideal solution/product would be.
UX Research Process
• UX research methods are
ways of generating insights
about your users, their
behavior, motivations, and
needs. You can use various
user research methods to
identify challenges and
opportunities to improve
the user experience,
including user interviews,
surveys, focus groups, card
sorting, usability testing,
and more.
UX Research Process
UX Research Process
Empathy and creating Empathy maps user persona
Affinity maps
An empathy map is a
collaborative tool
teams can use to gain
a deeper insight into
their customers. Much
like a user persona, an
empathy map can
represent a group of
users, such as a
customer segment
Affinity maps
What is a user persona?

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on your current (or
ideal) customer. Personas can be created by talking to users and
segmenting by various demographic and psychographic data to
improve your product marketing.
Why we need user personas:

User personas are extremely useful to grow and improve a business:
they help uncover the different ways people search for, buy, and use
products, so you can focus your efforts on improving the experience
for real people and use cases.
Affinity maps
What should a user persona consist of?

Let’s start with some basic theory.
Who are you?
What’s your main goal?
What’s your main barrier to achieving this goal?
Think about it: even though they’re buying or using the same product, your users and customers have different needs and are
drawn to different things. So when you ask these survey questions on your website, the answers allow you to paint a clear picture
of:
Who are they?
What are their goals?

This is so you can understand how your product/service actually fits into your users’ and customers’ lives. Why are they
buying/using it? What job are they trying to get done with it, what problem are they trying to solve?
What are the barriers preventing them from achieving their goals?
Now that you know who your users and customers are and what they are trying to accomplish, there’s one more thing to find out:
what is stopping them from buying your product, or using it more often/better/more expertly?
Affinity maps
user persona
Affinity maps
Affinity Map
Affinity maps
• THE END

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CWW TECH AFRICA

Topic 1: Design thinking process

Topic 2: UX research method

Topic 3: Empathy and creating

Topic 1: Design thinking process

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process

Topic 1: Design thinking process

Why is Design Thinking Important

STAGES OF DESIGN THINKING

STAGES OF DESIGN THINKING

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs

Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and Problems

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas

Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final

Overall, you should understand that these stages are

What is a user persona?

Why we need user personas:

What should a user persona consist of?

Who are you?

What’s your main goal?

What’s your main barrier to achieving this goal?

Who are they?

What are their goals?

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