Last week we had the opportunity to hear Dennis Boyle talk about IDEO’s design process and get a taste of the number of prototypes and tests necessary to launch a product commercially. Dennis also touched on the barriers IDEO sometimes faces with clients during the innovation process, the power of simple storytelling, and the importance of developing empathy for your user. The rest of Tuesday was spent forming final project groups. Individuals with specific ideas wrote their topic of interest on white boards, while classmates without any specific idea in mind reviewed ideas on the boards and brainstormed with fellow students to find an area of interest to work on for their final projects.
Areas of interest included: data display design, removing barriers for making kangaroo care easier (for parent and clinician), reducing noise in the NICU, improving the delivery of information to parents in the NICU, and developing ways to improve empathy among NICU nurses.
Thursday we had our “Interview Day,” a day for final project groups to interview NICU parents and NICU clinicians in a more intimate fashion. One clinician and one parent were assigned to a group of 3 students. Each group prepared their own field guide based on the project interest area. Halfway through the class, students were able to interview a second clinician and parent. Each interview was 45 minutes. Some of the comments we received from students at break and after class were:
“This is information overload!”
“This has been so helpful, thank you for organizing this day.”
“This class has changed my life.”
45 minutes may seem long for each interview, but as students discovered, it takes that long for an interviewee to start to feel comfortable with the interviewer. Typically an ethnographic interview is between 90-120 minutes. It’s usually in the last 30 minutes that the best bits are revealed. Building rapport is probably the biggest hurdle to discovering truly significant insights. I notice in my own work that when I actually build relationships with users (going back to interview/get feedback etc.) over and over that I get the best critique on prototypes and the best stories from users.
Many thanks to all of the NICU parents and clinicians that came last Thursday! We could not run this class successfully without your participation.