Pleasure and Pain » The Empathy Belly at Ford Motor Company

August 17, 2012

design / research / user experience

To me, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what ethnographic research actually is. We don’t go around asking people, ‘What do you want?’ or the absurd ‘Would you use this?’ Instead we work to understand their current behaviors, attitudes, motivations, and frustrations — what they do, how they feel, what they wish to accomplish, and what’s getting in their way. And then it is our jobs as designers and product owners to get to the root of the problem and craft a solution. One that will be both effective and pleasurable and hopefully a little bit surprising.