Empathy Lab believes that intuitive and engaging interfaces are designed with an in-depth understanding of your end-users' needs, behaviors, and motivations. Here is an overview of our behavioral research philosophy and methodology.

1. Applications are for Humans

2. Topics
I. Behavior
II. Context
Understanding
Human Behavior III. Intent
IV. Motivation
` Design Research
Methods &
Applications
V. Research
VI. Analysis

3. I. Behavior
“Human-centered approaches to industrial and
interaction design have long focused on studying
human behavior to create informed and appropriate
designs.”
Gentry Underwood
“Social Software: The other ‘Design for Social Impact’”

4. Design needs to support human behavior

5. Technology needs to support Design

6. Intuitive design anticipates end-user behavior
“We need to observe behavior in order to
support it in design”–
Joshua Porter “Behavior First, Design Second”

7. II. Context

8. Behavior is influenced by environment

9. Humans do not live or work in a lab
• The lab is not a great place to
study human behavior
– Labs are unfamiliar environments
– Lab machines have unfamiliar
configurations
Don’t study their behavior in one

10. III. Intent

11. Humans use apps to complete tasks
End-users engage with applications
to complete tasks
If tasks are easy to perform, the
application interface is intuitive
Good app design facilitates task completion

12. IV. Motivation

13. Emotions motivate actions
Successful Design creates emotional
bonds. It isn’t just “fluff.”
“The essential difference between reason and
emotion is that reason leads to conclusions while
emotion leads to actions.”
Neurologist Donald Calne

14. Here’s how it works…

15. V. Research
CONTEXT
Design Research
Behavior
CONTEXT Tasks (intent)
Motivation
CONTEXT

16. When do we conduct Research?
1 2 3
Discovery Design Validation
Strategy & Benchmarking Information Architecture Measurement & Optimization
Stakeholder Interviews Taxonomy & Information Architecture Usability Testing
Competitive Analysis Usage Scenarios & Task Flows Analytics & KPI
Analytics & KPI Wireframe Prototypes
Research & Analysis Visual Design
Qualitative Contextual Inquiry
Persona & Mental Models
PSDs/comps
Design Validation
Quantitative Survey Study Development & Testing
Heuristic Evaluation HTML/CSS/etc. and QA Testing
Design Research

17. How do we conduct Research?

18. Planning for Research
1. Identify
research Assess gaps in knowledge
objectives
2. Recruit
Develop/deploy
screener study
participants
3. Develop Non-leading, open-ended
a line of questions to prompt users
questioning to perform key tasks

19. Recruiting for Research
• Recruit “real” end-users
• Avoid “professional test takers”
• Recruit on widely adopted platforms

20. Contextual Inquiry – Empathy Lab’s Research Practice
• Maximize the time with end-users to inform the
content, brand, information architecture, and design strategy.
• Empathy Lab conducts contextual interviews with end-users where they
live, work, play, and, most importantly, where they are likely to interact with
our clients’ brands.
• Conduct research with end users using a portable usability lab
and user-driven scenarios.
• Empathy Lab believes that the goal of any usability test is to measure how
a participant would behave in a real-world environment, as opposed to an
artificial lab setting.
• Use realistic prototypes in usability tests.
• Empathy Lab believes that having end-users interact with realistic design
prototypes produces the most reliable and valid usability results. Although
useful and practical in some cases, low-fidelity prototypes cannot ultimately
ensure valid results and experience.

21. VI. Analysis
Identify Develop Design Taxonomy
Behavioral Behavioral & Information
Trends Personas Architecture
• Cut across all • Document behavioral • Develop application
personas differences in the form taxonomy to satisfy
• Have major of personas mental models
implications on • Aggregate key tasks • Identify existing
overarching as mental model content that fulfills key
architecture tasks, note gaps in
content

22. VI. Analysis
Task Task
Content
Content Content
MENTAL INFORMATION INTERACTION
PERSONAS
MODELS ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

23. Empathy Lab is a digital
strategy and execution firm
that designs intuitive and
engaging user interfaces.

24. Jonathan Lupo
SVP / Experience Design & Co-Founder
Provides clients with Creative and User Experience strategy
by gaining an in-depth understanding of their business and
end-user needs.
@userexperience
SERVICES EXPERIENCE
• Behavioral Research • Empathy Lab
• Information Architecture • R/GA
• Interaction Design • Agency.com (NYC)
• Creative Direction • Euro RSCG
• Digital Strategy • Masters Degree (ITP – NYU)