Empathize Stage — Tools & Techniques Quiz

1. A design student spends an afternoon in the cafeteria quietly watching how students find seats, order food, and react to menu choices.

2. A team member works side-by-side with a librarian for a full day to understand their daily frustrations with the library’s catalog system.

3. Students invite five cafeteria users to talk about their experiences, asking open-ended questions to uncover motivations and frustrations.

4. To understand how wheelchair users experience campus pathways, a designer spends a day moving around campus in a wheelchair.

5. Students simulate being new exchange students trying to use the campus website to find housing — they note confusion and stress points.

6. After observing users, the team draws a four-quadrant diagram labeled “Says, Thinks, Does, Feels” to visualize patterns of empathy.

7. The team creates a timeline from “student wakes up” to “arrives in class” showing each step, emotion, and friction point.

8. The team creates fictional characters like “Tech-savvy Tasha” and “Budget-conscious Ben” to represent key user groups and their goals.

9. A small group of students discuss how they feel about using e-learning platforms, reacting to each other’s experiences.

10. A designer retells the story of a cafeteria worker named “Maya” — what she faces every morning — to help the team empathize emotionally.