Empathise, define, ideate — Examples

Example 1 — From observation notes to one problem sentence

A team is looking at why warehouse pickers lose time on the floor. An hour of watching one picker produced the notes below, mixed with the picker’s own opinions. Turn the observed behaviour into one define statement in the picker’s words, and name two answers that statement rules out.

14:02  opens the order screen, scrolls past search, taps "recent"
14:04  mutters "where is it", repeats the same scroll
14:07  walks to the terminal, writes the number on his glove
14:11  says the app is "a bit ugly" and he would like dark mode
14:19  asks a colleague which aisle the item is in

Solution

Observations kept:
 - reached for "recent" before search, twice        behaviour
 - left the aisle to read the terminal              behaviour
 - asked a colleague for the location               behaviour

Dropped:
 - "ugly", "dark mode"                              opinion, no task cost

Problem statement:
A picker halfway down an aisle needs the location of the next line item
without walking back to a terminal, but the location exists only on the
terminal.

Ruled out:
 - a visual restyle, because colour does not move the picker back
 - a bigger search box on the terminal, because the walk is the cost

The statement names the person, the goal and the obstacle, and it rests only on lines that were watched happening, so each claim can be traced back to a note. It rules out two answers before either is drawn, which is what makes it testable. The usual mistake is carrying the opinion lines into the define stage, where “he would like dark mode” becomes a requirement that no amount of building will satisfy.