Empathy for the new normal

Two simple principles to understand your users new normal.

Key Takeaways

1.      People are getting back to normal, but it will be a new normal.

2.      If you have to design a new service because of economic pressure or health regulation you need to consider your users in your new service design.

3.      Your users- their attitudes, behaviours, needs will have changed due to their experiences during lockdown.

4.      How rediscovering some basic tools in asking questions and active listening can help you understand your user and design services that meet their needs.

As our lives start to open up again, I am taking some time to think about the things I want to keep about life in lockdown. I am going to think twice about flying into cities and driving for meetings and conferences that could be done online. I am going to appreciate the time with my son, where we have nothing planned and nowhere to go, to do jigsaws, colour in and build lego. My love of travel has been shaken. Bustling airports and thronging cities evoke a feeling of fear rather than thrill. I am not the same person now in June that I was in March. I am sure I’m not alone in having changed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. My behaviours have changed, my attitudes have changed, my needs have changed.

If you have an enterprise that has to design a new way of working due to economic pressure or health regulations you need to consider your users in the design of your new service. Your years of experience of working with customers, clients or users may cause you to make assumptions about what they want, but think again. People have changed because of the Covid-19 experience. To design a service that meets the changed needs of users, consider getting to know them again.

I am designing a new technology application for farmers, a group of people mostly unknown to me. I have lived the largest part of my life in cities. My parents and extended family are mostly living in cities or towns. I have no farmers in my close circle of friends. To try and communicate a new technology to people who I do not know and understand I have had to go back to basic tools to get to know them. Questioning and listening. It sounds easy, but as with a lot of  simple things, we have moved away from them and need to have a reminder of how they are best done.

In my late teens and early twenties I sold soap in Toronto, financial services in Barcelona, internet content in Galway, beer directly to pubs in Co. Down. As I my career progressed the products became more complex, therapeutic homes to local authorities in the UK, cutting edge satellite technology to space agencies over Europe, Internet of Things enabled algae farms in NW of Ireland. And the titles became more opaque business development manager, communications and bid executive. But I was still selling. In the next months I am completing a master’s in UX (User Experience) and Applied Innovation the core of my masters in user centric design. I need to understand users to design services that work for them. To understand them I need to find out about them. For this I find myself going back to my basic training in sales and customer service which introduced the concepts of open questions and active listening.

Anyone, like me who began their working life in sales and customer service will be familiar with the importance of asking questions that are open, that require more than a yes or no, and how you need to actively listen to answers considering tone and attitude and what is not said as much as the actual words. If you have a business where a number of departments are in contact with customers, get them all involved in open questioning and active listening to understand how your customer has changed.

People are talking about getting back to normal, to a new normal. To understand what this means for your enterprise we need to get back to basics of asking and listening.