Designing like a user

“People ignore designs that ignore people” — Frank Chimero (Honeycutt, 2025)

When you hear the word “design” … you probably think of a visual or a finished product. However, design, “in its most effective form is a process, an action, a verb not a noun. A protocol for solving problems and discovering new opportunities” (Fast Company Staff, 2006). Someone designed every system and object at some point. When designing, you go through the design thinking process.

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative, solution-based approach to solving problems. When approaching a complex problem, it is extremely useful because it breaks the problem down and focuses on generating numerous human-centered ideas (Friis Dam, R, 2025).

The design thinking process is mainly made up of five stages:

Empathize: research your users’ needs to gain a deep understanding of them
Define: state your users’ needs and problems in a human-centered manner to clearly identify the goal at hand
Ideate: challenge assumptions and create numerous ideas to solve the problem defined in the previous stages
Prototype: create scaled-down versions of your solutions to easily share and test
Test: try the solutions and prototypes out on an audience to get a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of your innovation

The stages in the design process are likely to repeat as designers gain new insights into their solutions and the users they aim to support.

(Friis Dam, R, 2025).

The first step in understanding

In this blog, we will be focusing on the empathy stage of the design thinking process. Taking the time to understand your user better is crucial to success.

At its core, empathy, “is our ability to see the world through other people’s eyes — to see what they see, feel what they feel and experience things as they do” (Friis Dam, R., & Yu Siang, T., 2024). Practicing empathy helps a designer appreciate people’s emotions and needs, understand how they interact with the world around them, and learn what users mean, not just what they say.

Designers can use various methods during the empathize stage. They all have the same goal: to immerse yourself in the context of the people you design for to gain a deep understanding of their needs (Friis Dam, R., & Yu Siang, T., 2024).

Method 1: Service Safari

One empathic research method designers use is a service safari.

In a service safari, the researcher takes on the user’s persona and walks a mile in their shoes. As the researcher completes the tasks they have designed, they can develop an “understanding of the common needs of the user, the common problems that they might encounter, and discover potential gaps that the researcher might have seen” (Wiecek, 2018).

In a service safari, the researcher experiences the product or system from the users’ perspective rather than a designer’s (IxDF – Interaction Design Foundation, 2024). This empathic research method is extremely beneficial at this stage because it can uncover unspoken pain points from a fresh perspective. The researcher, who may be unfamiliar with the process they are acting out, may even discover issues that could be resolved but that users have simply gotten used to.

For example, a pharmaceutical company wanted to understand the injectable therapy process. The designers planned a month-long experience in which 35 members of the organization took home four prototypes, stored them properly in their fridges, completed mock injections once a week, and documented their experiences. The organization quickly identified the design’s shortcomings and worked to improve the patient experience through packaging updates and stronger customer service (Battarbee et al., 2014).

Method 2: Shadowing

A second empathic research method is shadowing. In this method, the researcher/designer observes a process or organization by immersing themselves in their lives. They may record videos or take notes throughout the process about what they experience. The goal is to reveal how a real user interacts and feels about the specific design. The designer should not ask questions or comment to avoid swaying the user’s actions. An unbiased researcher can identify latent user needs they might not have been able to vocalize (msg, n.d.).

Say a coffee shop wants to improve customer satisfaction and decrease wait times. They could hire a researcher to observe their workflow for a few days. They would sit behind the counter, watch how the baristas communicate with the customers, and take notes on their current workflow. By having someone shadow the team, they could uncover areas for improvement and new systems to implement in their routines

Method 3: The Five Whys Method

For the Five Whys Method of empathic research, the researcher/designer conducts a one-on-one interview with the user. The researcher uses open-ended questions to avoid leading the user or assuming anything about them. The key to this method is to ask a total of five “whys” after the first response. Asking “why” dives deeper into the user’s answers and mindset.

An example of the Five Whys method, provided by Playbook UX, outlines a conversation about how a late invoice meant no payment, and now the bills cannot be paid.

Question 1: Why was it late?
Answer 1: We forgot to send it out on the 1st.
Question 2: Why did you forget to send it out?
Answer 2: Because I was on vacation until Monday the 2nd.
Question 3: Why didn’t you send it on Monday the 2nd?
Answer 3: Because my boss couldn’t approve it
Question 4: Why couldn’t he or she approve it?
Answer 4: Because he or she was traveling.
Question 5: Why wasn’t there communication about traveling and vacations?
Answer 5: We’ve never had a process for ensuring the invoice gets out when members of the team are traveling so we didn’t know what to do.”

By asking “why” repeatedly, the designer can get to the root of the issue and adjust accordingly.

Designing for the user

Empathy is essential in all aspects of life. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes is how you connect and form deep bonds. As a designer, viewing problems from the user’s perspective is the only way you can produce a successful solution.