Two weeks ago I attended my first MeetUp event in New York, which was the Empathy Jam organised by The UX Lab. I didn’t know what to expect but I wasn’t left disappointed!
The goal of the day was to use our skill of empathy, mainly to understand people who will be affected by the effects of AI in the future. This could include people in the service industry where jobs can be displaced easily with the use of machines and AI. An example is the self-service checkouts now being rolled out by McDonalds which threatens the livelihoods of many employees.
In order to prepare ourselves for this task in user research, we were given a great talk about the intricacies of User Research by Brian Greene from Etsy. He broke it into two parts: 1. How to conduct user research and 2. how to synthesise your findings. The following were the points I found interesting:
- “the product roadmap is already in the mind of the users” – I thought this really epitomises the importance of user research as you are extracting the information needed to create a valuable product or service for your user and only they know what they need. As UX professionals we need to tap into that.
- Look at what people have done, not what they will do – by looking at user’s current patterns and behaviours, you can assume and ideate around how your product service will fit into them. While you may ask about a users’ future intentions, there is no guarantee they will follow through with that.
- Act dumb! – if in conversation with a user and they say something such as “Do you know about XYZ?”, pretend you’re not familiar with it, even if you are. Listen and find out why they brought this up as it might lead to useful and relevant information. There might be a good reason it came into their mind.
- What is enough research? – Brian explained that this really depends on the stakeholders opinion at times depending on what they want. However, he also mentioned that you see certain patterns appearing repeatedly, you know that you are getting somewhere.
With that information now instilled in our minds, the team and myself set about coming up with a solution, which was based around the challenge below:
“How might we create tools and platforms that utilize AI for New Yorkers to learn and practice soft skills?”
Our first step was to brainstorm ideas and once we had an idea of what our solution might be (even though there were still high levels of uncertainty), we headed out to Central Park to talk to some “users”. With our collected research, we managed to identify that communication is an important skill in the workplace in order to work effectively and thrive, therefore we came to the conclusion that communication was a key skill for potential displaced workers if they were to success in another industry.
The team synthesising our collected research.
In order to help these people build and improve their communication skills, we came up with a solution. A lot of service industry people for example work various hours, making it difficult for them to enrol in classes or training outside of work. We created a low fidelity prototype of an app, using paper and the Pop app on our smartphones, that would allow users to input their location and time preferences for classes and from there they could choose their preferred classes. Our business model would include creating a partnership between educational institutions and organisations around the city. Once the classes were finished, the user would be enrolled in a professional network that would allow them to attend events such as mentoring programs and recruitment drives. The reason we included this was because people within the service industry might not necessarily be in a network of people who work in a skilled work force. This would then increase their chances of securing a job in an industry which would be much less susceptible to being automated by AI.
Most Civically Engaged Team (Source: https://twitter.com/empathyjam)
Our team ended up winning a prize for the Most Civically Engaged Team! We greatly appreciated this and all the work that was put in by all the judges and mentors on the day. I would love to thank my teammates, Luke, TJ, Hana and Mike as everyone worked together so well and made the day so fun. For anyone out their thinking of attending any of these events, I would recommend doing so as you are thrown into the work and learn so much in process.
The Eye of Y 