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Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design by Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport Harvard Business Review Reprint 97606 Harvard Business Review NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1997 Reprint Number HUGH COURTNEY, JANE KIRKLAND STRATEGY UNDER UNCERTAINTY 97603 AND PATRICK VIGUERIE JON R. KATZENBACH THE MYTH OF THE TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM 97604 CONSTANTINOS C. MARKIDES TO DIVERSIFY OR NOT TO DIVERSIFY 97608 DOROTHY LEONARD SPARK INNOVATION THROUGH EMPATHIC DESIGN 97606 AND JEFFREY F. RAYPORT BEHNAM TABRIZI AND RICK WALLEIGH DEFINING NEXT-GENERATION PRODUCTS: AN INSIDE LOOK 97610 RICHARD PASCALE, MARK MILLEMANN CHANGING THE WAY WE CHANGE 97609 AND LINDA GIOJA IDALENE F. KESNER HBR CASE STUDY AND SALLY FOWLER WHEN CONSULTANTS AND CLIENTS CLASH 97605 ANDREW CAMPBELL THINKING ABOUT… AND MARCUS ALEXANDER WHAT’S WRONG WITH STRATEGY? 97601 ABRAHAM ZALEZNIK HBR CLASSIC REAL WORK 97611 CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN MANAGER’S TOOL KIT MAKING STRATEGY: LEARNING BY DOING 97602 MICHAEL MACCOBY BOOKS IN REVIEW IS THERE A BEST WAY TO BUILD A CAR? 97607 What customers can’t tell you might be just what you need to develop successful new products. Spark innovation through empathic Design by Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport 102 ARTWORK BY BILL MAYER lmost every company competes to some degree on the basis of continual A innovation. And to be commercially successful, new product and service ideas must, of course, meet a real – or perceived – customer need. Hence the current managerial mantras: “Get close to the customer” and “Listen to the voice of the customer.” The problem is, customers’ ability to guide the development of new products and services is limited by their experience and their ability to imag- ine and describe possible innovations. How can companies identify needs that customers themselves may not recognize? How can designers develop ways to meet those needs, if even in the course of extensive market research, customers never mention their desires because they assume those desires can’t be fulfilled? A set of techniques we call empathic design can help resolve those dilemmas. At its foundation is observation – watching consumers use products or services. But unlike in focus groups, usability laboratories, and other contexts of tradition- al market research, such observation is conducted in the customer’s own environ- ment – in the course of normal, everyday routines. In such a context, researchers can gain access to a host of information that is not accessible through other observation-oriented research methods. Copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. 103 spark innovation through empathic design The techniques of empathic design – gathering, ears. Customers can guide an auto or motorcycle analyzing, and applying information gleaned from manufacturer in making even minute adjustments observation in the field – are familiar to top engi- in its offering because they are familiar with the neering/design companies and to a few forward- products and have developed over time a finely thinking manufacturers, but they are not common honed set of desires and perceived needs. In fact, the practice. Nor are they taught in marketing courses, driving experience is so deeply ingrained that they being more akin to anthropology than marketing can re-create most of the needs they encounter while on the road even when they are not actually in the driver’s seat. Sometimes, customers are so The practices of traditional mar- keting science are also effective in accustomed to current conditions situations where consumers are al- ready familiar with a proposed solu- that they don’t think to ask for tion to a problem because of their experiences with it in a different a new solution. context. Peel-away postage stamps were an innovation that customers could comprehend because they had science. In fact, few companies are set up to employ already encountered the light adhesives used in empathic design; the techniques require unusual Post-it Notes and peel-away labels. collaborative skills that many organizations have But sometimes, customers are so accustomed to not developed. Market researchers generally use current conditions that they don’t think to ask for text or numbers to spark ideas for new products, a new solution – even if they have real needs that but empathic designers use visual information as could be addressed. Habit tends to inure us to in- well. Traditional researchers are generally trained convenience; as consumers, we create “work- to gather data in relative isolation from other disci- arounds” that become so familiar we may forget plines; empathic design demands creative interac- that we are being forced to behave in a less-than- tions among members of an interdisciplinary team. optimal fashion – and thus we may be incapable of Developing the expertise, however, is a worthy telling market researchers what we really want. investment. Empathic design is a relatively low- For example, when asked about an editing func- cost, low-risk way to identify potentially critical tion in a software package, one customer had no customer needs. It’s an important source of new complaints – until she sat down to use the program product ideas, and it has the potential to redirect in front of the observer. Then she realized that her a company’s technological capabilities toward work was disrupted when the program did not entirely new businesses. automatically wrap text around graphics while she edited. Accustomed to working around the prob- When Questions Don’t Yield Answers lem, she had not mentioned it in earlier interviews. Market research is generally unhelpful when a When a product or service is well understood, tradi- company has developed a new technological capa- tional marketing science provides amazingly so- bility that is not tied to a familiar consumer para- phisticated ways to gain useful information from digm. If no current product exists in the market potential customers and influence their purchasing that embodies at least the most primitive form of decisions. Consider how subtle are preferences of smell and sound, yet car manufacturers can design Dorothy Leonard is the William J. Abernathy Professor automobile interiors to evoke the specific scent of of Business Administration at the Harvard Business expensive leather that U.S. buyers expect in a lux- School in Boston, Massachusetts. Her teaching, research, ury vehicle. Nissan Design International tested and consulting focus on creativity, innovative knowl- more than 90 samples of leather before selecting 3 edge management as a core capability, and new-product development. Her book that U.S. noses preferred for the Infinity J-30. Simi- Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation was larly, manufacturers are adept at fine-tuning en- published in 1995 by the Harvard Business School Press. gines so that they make the preferred sounds associ- Jeffrey F. Rayport is an associate professor of business ated with surging power and swift acceleration. administration at the Harvard Business School. His re- Harley-Davidson, in fact, has sued competitors that search focuses on the impact on new information tech- have imitated the voices of its motors, which have nologies on service-marketing strategies for informa- been carefully adjusted to please its customers’ tion-intensive companies. 104 harvard business review November – December 1997 spark innovation through empathic design a new product, consumers have no foundation on information that cannot be gathered through tradi- which to formulate their opinions. When radio tional marketing or product research. technology was first introduced in the early twenti- Triggers of Use. What circumstances prompt peo- eth century, it was used solely for transmitting ple to use your product or service? Do your cus- Morse code and voice communication from point tomers turn to your offering when, and in the way, to point. Only after David Sarnoff suggested in you expected? If they don’t, there may be an oppor- 1915 that such technology could be better em- tunity for your company. ployed in broadcasting news, music, and baseball Consider what Hewlett-Packard learned in the games was the “radio music box” born. Sarnoff had early 1990s by observing users of the HP 95/100 LX put his knowledge of the technology together with series of personal digital assistants (PDAs). The what he found when he observed families gathered company allied itself with Lotus Development Cor- in their homes to envision a totally different use for poration to produce the PDA mainly because its the technology. No one had asked for broadcasting product developers knew that their “road warrior” because they didn’t know it was feasible. consumers valued the computing power of Lotus So there are many reasons why standard tech- 1-2-3 spreadsheet software. But when HP’s re- niques of inquiry rarely lead to truly novel product searchers watched customers actually using the concepts. It is extremely difficult to design an in- product, they found that the personal-organizer strument for market research that is amenable to software the company had also licensed from Lotus quantitative analysis and also open-ended enough was at least as important a trigger for using the to capture a customer’s environment completely. PDA as the spreadsheet was. Market researchers have to contend with respon- When the makers of Cheerios went out in the dents’ tendency to try to please the inquirer by pro- field, they found that breakfast wasn’t necessarily viding expected answers, as well as their inclina- the primary purpose for which certain households tion to avoid embarrassment by not revealing were using the cereal. Parents of small children, practices they suspect might be deemed inappropri- they found, were more interested in the fact that ate. The people who design surveys, run focus the pieces could be bagged, carried, and doled out groups, and interview customers further cloud the one by one as a tidy snack anytime, anywhere to results by inadvertently – and inevitably – introduc- occupy restless tots.
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