Importance of Empathic Research in Developing Products

Innovative culture must address unarticulated and undiscovered needs - Mike A.

Empathy means being able to sympathize or relate to others through better understanding their state of mind.[1]  Empathic research helps businesses identify what customers really want rather than developing products that companies choose to offer – it observes how consumers use products in their own settings, rather than in controlled environment.[2] 

Although focused-group research yields good results, its participants usually tend to give researcher what the researcher wants to know or hear rather than the “truth”, whereas, empathic research is valuable in getting to unarticulated and undiscovered needs.[3]

Empathic research is called qualitative to contrast it with the quantitative approach, which refers to measurements.[4]  As such, empathic observational research should still be conducted in a systematic format, utilizing photos, videos or direct observation of consumer’s compensatory behavior.[5]  Developing a close relationship with consumers and making them a part of the product development process should be a priority.  Suri believes there are four classes of methods for understanding what really matters:[6]

1. Learning from data, whether secondary sources of our own analyses
2. Looking at people in context
3. Asking people to participate
4. Trying things ourselves

As effective as it is, empathic observation research should not be the only research method conducted by an organization.

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[1] [5] Gary Oster, Divining the Need, Compensatory Behavior of Customers, Regent Global Business Review,  August 2008

[2] Christine M. Piotrowski, Problem Solving and Critical Thinking for Designers, John Wiley & Sons, 2011

[3] Randy Schueller, Perry Romanowski, Multifunctional Cosmetics, Volume 26 of Cosmetic Science and Technology Series, CRC Press, 2002

[4] David E. McNabb, Research Methods in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, M.E. Sharpe, 2008

[6] Jane Fulton Suri, The Experience Evolution: Developments in Design Practice, The Design Journal, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2000