 Welcome everyone to the session Empathy in Testing. How can it be a game changer for your product by FESA? We are glad that they could join us today without further delay. Over to you FESA. Thank you so much Nidhi. Hello everyone and I'm just sharing my screen. Thank you so much. So my name is FESA Yusuf and I work as a Senior Product Manager at Genetic Solutions and I run a couple of non-profit organizations around tech. Today we'll be talking about Empathy in Testing and how can it be a game changer for you. My background in technology starts from development and then from being a tester for a very long time and then from there I moved into project and product management. These are some organizations that I've been associated with so I work at Genetic Solutions as a part-time Senior Product Manager. I am an ambassador for crypto checks. I also do a lot of work on Upwork and run code girls and women in tech. These are two non-profit organizations based out in Pakistan. So today's agenda is about understanding empathy in a product's context. We'll talk about user goals versus user features, identifying our users, their context and needs. I'll also give you some tips for being an empathetic tester. We'll also be talking a lot about neurodiversity, abilities and a lot of other aspects of the work that we do. So let's start. So what exactly is empathy? Empathy is basically the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is something that as human beings is quite native to us and recently I was reading a book called To Android's Dream of Electric Sheep. In that book, the way that they kind of differentiate between an android and a human being is to basically administer them an empathy test. So it is something that is extremely unique to human beings. So when we talk about another as a software engineer or a technology person, who is this another person that we are talking about? Aipuja, thank you. So this another person is basically these are different groups of people. So we have users, clients, team members, the leadership of the organization and different stakeholders that are there. When we talk about empathy in the sense of our work, there are three types of empathy that we specifically talk about. The first one is cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is basically our ability to understand how a person feels and the ability to kind of guess that what they may be thinking. This is something that we use in our daily life a lot in the sense that when we are talking to someone and someone is telling us something that happened. We are able to understand how they are feeling in that situation and we can also understand a bit of their thought processes. When we talk about emotional empathy, this is the next stage where we are able to understand what exactly is the other person feeling. So if the other person is sad or happy or confused or frustrated, we are able to understand those feelings as ourselves. And then the last stage is compassionate empathy. This is the last stage and the superior stage of empathy where we are, you know, we can, we can go to the next step, which is we do something to make sure that the other person. You know, is in a safe space or we start caring about their well-being and their safety. So this is the step where we do something to resolve the problems. And this is where all of us, you know, as technology professional lie because a lot of the things that we are building are helping our users with solving their problems. So let's talk about, you know, a case for empathy. So of course we know that empathy lies at the center of human-centric design. It also lies at the center of the design thinking principles. The great products that we see, most of them know their users and their context. Products can be sticky for different reasons. Products can be great because of different reasons. But most of the great products know their users because they know their users really well and they know their context. People are similar. So all of us are similar, no matter how we look, no matter how we live. But at the same time, there are more differences and we'll talk about the difference in context in a bit. People have emotional reactions to things, even websites and apps. So you will see someone using an application and you will see that they're happy with it. They are okay with it. They think that it feels like a breeze using that app. But others may be frustrated with some kind of application or with some kind of website. So currently here it's tax season. And so, you know, before logging into the government's website, I've been kind of preparing myself to get into that because I know I'd be extremely frustrated looking at the user interface and user experience of that website. So people do feel emotions and this is something that you must have also felt. Then emotions, we know that emotions ruin the perception of both quality and value. If people are happy with something, they will feel that this thing is of good quality. If people are unhappy with it, they won't feel that this is of good quality. It's something that happens in everyday products as well. So if you like something, no matter how it costs, you will feel that it's more value than the other things. When we build something on the basis of empathy. It basically minimizes the cost of customer support and marketing. Because we see that the design is so improved that people are able to find things quickly and they don't kind of keep on reaching out to us because they have problems with the products and also, you know, it spreads quickly. So the cost for promotion and marketing is also minimized. So the next item on the agenda is about user goals versus user product or product features. So we know that features do not motivate the user. Their own goals do whatever their goals may be if they're using an application for managing there to do if they're using an application for sending money if they're using an application for social media for recording something so on and so forth. So they are doing it because of a reason they do not care about the features that the app has as long as the app is able to help them, you know, do their goals or fulfill their goals. So if the app does not have the features that support their goals they will leave the app, but again they do not care about fancy or complex features as such. Again, there is a subset of there is like a small group of people who do care about features like people who work in technology or people who do app reviews, but at the same time the most, the most population doesn't care about that. So what we do is that we need to ask what exactly do the user want to achieve by using this application. So if you are creating an application for supporting a certain type of user, what would be their goals and motivations and what exactly are they want to, what exactly they're looking to achieve and how does the environment look like where are they based. We think about their demographics we think about their emotional states we think about their context we also think about who they are as a person. We'll talk about this, you know, a bit later. So, and as testers, other than just thinking about, you know, running the test cases or thinking about the scenarios we also need to give our input in terms of is there a better smarter easier way to achieve something as a user. And of course, we also, we always always always push for this idea that we are not supposed to only deliver features, we are basically helping users with achieving their goals quickly and without any kind of frustration or confusion. So this is a specific tool that we use in my line of work right now so I'm working as a product manager so we do this we call it empathy mapping. This is something that testers can also kind of take benefit out of so what does empathy mapping does. Empathy mapping helps you helps us understand users context so where they are exactly what they're hearing what they're feeling what they're thinking about it. So we also think about the attention span we also think about the state of mind we also think about their perspective of things. So, let me give you an example for that so I, I told you that I run a nonprofit organization called women in technical. It started with, with a Facebook group, and it's a women only community for women to help each other network and you know mentor each other, and we've done a lot of programs from from that community. So for communities like ours, Facebook basically created a mentor show feature where you can register yourself as a mentor and other people can see your profile and kind of get in touch with us on paper. This sounds amazing in the sense that for a community like ours and for a lot of very niche specific tech specific business specific or other, you know, niche communities this sounds wonderful that people can showcase themselves or show their availability as mentors, but other people can get in touch with them. So, then this feature was rolled out and I'm talking as someone who was a user of Facebook and not someone who works there. So I can, as a product manager I can completely understand the idea behind expanding the expanding the you know feature set of user group of Facebook groups and rolling that feature out. So what we did is that we started, you know, pushing our members to use that feature, but we saw an extremely low, you know, adoption of that feature because people were not interested in using that my daughter feature. On the other hand, Facebook recently rolled out a feature to do anonymous post in a community. And this was something that the moment it rolled out and because I'm the admin of the community. The day it rolled out I started getting messages from a lot of members that please enable that feature in the community because you want to make anonymous post you want to ask advice, and you want, you know, to ask questions without showing our identity. This was something that, you know, that kind of had like a very, very high adoptability in terms of the community that I run in a few other communities that I'm a part of. And I was talking to someone a friend of mine who works for Facebook and she told me that that anonymous post idea came from a hackathon from a user. So this was an excellent example of thinking about users and their motives and their goals and their contacts. So, let's talk about the difference in context. So the first thing is abilities. So we know that there are around one million people in the world, one billion people in the world, different kinds of abilities. So, when we talk about when we think about our applications, we also need to think about accessibility. And as as testers, there is something that can be easily overlooked. And I guess you know someone or have someone in your life who have that kind of who have different abilities. So, let me give you another example of that. So, so I told you that I run a coding bootcamp and that coding camp has an accessible accessible facility so if someone is on a wheelchair or someone is on a wheelchair to come to the bootcamp and learn. But we never thought about someone with who's visually impaired to come at the bootcamp and learn coding. And then recently we started seeing a few people coming to the bootcamp saying that they would like to learn how to code but they can't see. And this is something that kind of made me think that we thought that we were accessible, but we are missing a great part of the population who are unable to see. And is there any way that we can, you know, help them learn coding. I'm still unable to find the answers and still looking for the answers. So if anyone of you know how to do that or how to help us kind of set up that kind of facility I would love to get in touch with you. So, when you're looking at your apps you need to think about the people who have different abilities than you so limited access of an input device maybe they can't show the mouse. So, can they use your application by only using. If it's a web application can they use it via keyboard or just you know, stolen on the phone or iPad. You need to think about accessibility compliance you need to think about being able to use three leaders on the applications. You also need to think about people with color blindness. People with tremors like my mother has essential tremors so it's difficult for her to use a mobile application a lot of times in typing is a bit difficult. So we need to have those kinds of users also a part of our user testing group to get to know their context better. The next is language culture. So we need to think about localization is your app available in multiple language is it needed in multiple languages so in the context of Pakistan. We have a huge population who can understand learn and speak English English is like the official language, but at the same time there is a big population, a group of population for them in application in Urdu is, you know, better. And if you talk about spreading content or spreading awareness and regional languages are also part of that. So we need to think about language barriers you need to think about supporting with multiple languages you also need to think about the idea that this application or the product that we are building is it or stepping some kind of cultural boundary. So this is also, you know, an important point. Let me talk about level of literacy. So this is again an interesting case that I got to know so I'm not sure about other people but I have seen people who do not who are not literate using a cell phone. And for and seeing them using a smartphone is an experience in itself because you will know you will understand that how amazingly they use the resources that are not even made for them. They use them in a way that is extremely, you know, fascinating to watch. So I have seen people using WhatsApp, even though they are not literate but they're using the whole app by just communicating via voice notes. I have seen people saving numbers by using symbols only because they cannot write. I have seen people using, you know, you saving numbers by the by the way of, you know, setting different brain tones to it, finding different settings by remembering that you click here and here and here and here and then you go there and remembering things by the way of icons and a lot of times they are even unable to understand the icons but they remember how it looked like and then accessing the application via that. Then of course level of digital literacy it's extremely important to your the main problem with a lot of the products that I see as testers we need to think about shorter user journey simpler user journey so your search need to be extremely robust, your people who do not know a lot of technical terms or digital literacy you need to make sure that the language is very, very easy to understand and people are able to understand what exactly the app is asking them to do neurodiversity this is an extremely kind of interesting topic for me because I'm also a neurodiverse individual. So we need to think about clear and cleaner and concise user journey so for someone like me who has dyslexia it's extremely important that the app has cleaner fonts, otherwise it will become really difficult for me to read if if the interface has curvasive or different types of fonts that are not very clear and I'm unable to see, you know, different alphabets separately, I won't be able to read it. Again, kind of have ADHD as well so if things are jumping all over the screen and there are so many flashy colors, I won't be able to understand it. If you ask me to find something on the screen and that and that thing is not kind of important enough mark that's important enough on the screen it can become very difficult for me to find it. So, again, if if some if you know someone who's who has autism or who's autistic, you will know that for them, the copy the content the app sees a journey should be very clean and neat so they're able to easily understand that. Of course device and network restrictions is another thing. So in Pakistan, a lot of rural communities to not have access to broadband internet. They have no, you know, low quality data packages with that do not kind of help them much in the sense that a lot of content doesn't load on those network connections but we need to think about that as well. We need to think about multiple people sharing a single device people only having a portable device so for for people like us who have multiple devices tablets, phones and laptops and a lot of cases multiple laptops and devices for us to you know just go from a cell phone to a web interface is very easy, but for a lot of people they only have a portable device so is your app completely accessible on a portable device, especially it is made for those kinds of you know communities. And of course, you need to think about people using things on devices that are that have low processing abilities so how much processing is required for that kind of for that specific kind of. A few examples to share so this is basically a tale of two apps so I was working with a team of consultants consultants and we basically built two apps together one was a huge success and another one was a disaster. So I want to share this story with you to tell you that how one team can build two things and can do one thing very well, because they knew the users and they were the users themselves and another. And another case where they did not understand the use case that well, they were not able to deliver. So the first app was so we were we were people of we were a team of seven people to women and five men. I was part of that team and the team was based all around the world. And the first app that that were assigned to us was basically kind of like a virtual assistant scheduler business finance management note taking kind of application for technology consultants and freelancers. So this was the app that we built and because all of us were from technology all of us were from the consulting background so for us to kind of understand the users context was extremely easy. And we use that we basically built that application we launched it really well we were I still use that application cannot tell you the name of it because of course in the a but still so the app did really well. Once the app went into the maintenance phase and it was assigned to a different team we were given another application to build. And this application was basically for first time mothers. And interestingly, there were only two women in that group and none of them had children and the five men in the in the group. Some did not have children and some have like older children. So when we started building that app we basically did a lot of interviews with with you mother spoke to users. Launched the application did user testing as well and it did well and we were like okay so we have built something good and we, we, you know, basically pushed it live. The app had three main features. One was it was connecting a lot of stores aggregating a lot of, you know, products together in the sense that you can shop directly from that application for things for newborn and mothers. Second, it, it can connect you with an expert so application, a child interest and, you know, other experts. Some in some cases also to, you know, a midwife and then the third feature was there was an extensive database of questions that you can ask to the app and the app will give you answers so you are able to search different terms and get answers on that. So once the app was launched and they started seeing the analytics or data of the application we saw that the shopping part of the application was doing really well, but nobody, but people won't go to the next page of the search a and second nobody was using the talk to an expert feature. And this kind of made us really concerned because we spent a lot of money in hiring experts and we wanted people to connect to those experts as well. So, eventually, even though we called in mothers and asked them to use the application in our office, I was in Pakistan but again, the team that they basically asked moms to, you know, come to the office and use the application but we were unable to kind of understand the context of it. Then my teammate, one of the other women I had my team said that her best friend is just just gave birth to a baby boy and she said that I would like to go to her home and see and ask her to download the app and use it. And I want to observe her. And this was something that I realized that this was a very good idea. And we said, yeah, I think that's a great idea. You should go and check check with her. She went there. And when she came back she told us that when a mother is trying to talk to an expert. A lot of times it's a, it's a situation of an emergency. And when they are looking for answers. Also, it is a time of an emergency. And in that time, the apps interface was so confusing, or so tedious for them to access the right information or get connected to the right person that they would abandon that. This was an excellent finding in the sense that even though we have spent a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of resources in building that app, we never observed an actual mom in an actual situation where a child is crying or child is sick and they need to access information as quickly as possible. So this was kind of a lesson for for a lifetime for me and I wanted to share this today with you guys to let you know that even though a team of experts can, you know, with a lot of PhDs on the team as well in the sense that they were helping us with content for for the application we were not able to crack the code of how to understand a user's context. So a few lessons learned from the stories that I told you and also from this presentation. So user testing, of course, can save both money and a lot of heartache. So you need to invest in that. You can also you should need to go to go one step further and observe your users and their real habitat. So one more step further see if you can do diary studies. I've also worked on a few projects that we did diary studies it is something that was initially done by Google and then a lot of people, you know adopted that it's an excellent pay off getting to know how your users are using your applications quality is value of course and value should be something that the user gets so it's not about you mainly it's about the user the people who are using your application. We need to think of users who leave the app. This is extremely important because in a lot of cases we become part of that survivorship bias. We are we are only thinking about users that stayed on the application so the analytics will tell you that these users who stayed on the app did this and this and this, but getting to know the people who left the app for one way for one reason or the another from one screen or the other screen or they downloaded the app and never signed up or they went to your you know web application signed up and never opened any kind of emails or never interacted with the system again. We need to interview those users as well to talk to them. So, exactly what they felt when they made this decision that they need to abandon this the solution or this product or the system. We need to optimize our applications for the ones who stayed, but we also need to fix our applications for the ones who left. So, the pipeline will also be always be leaking. A lot of people will leave, but the number of people who are leaving is if it's you know going up and if it's way higher and you also know for a fact that these this is your target audience, then you need to invest in that as well. And testers have this unique ability to help the team in that because we are the advocates for for the users and we understand a lot of the things that maybe overlooked by overlooked by other people. And of course we need to use your product like use your own product like a user I told you about the the the app we were able to use it so we were able to fix a lot of things optimize a lot of things do a lot of things with it. But where we were we were not using the app as users, it was difficult for us to kind of understand the context of context of of an actual user. And of course, some tips. So how can we be an empathetic tester. We need to think about curiosity and non judgment thing talk to other people with curiosity with this idea of learning with this idea of understanding things and without any judgment on what they are doing and how they are doing it. Without any judgment about their context about their abilities about their diversity about whatever it may be. We claim to be our users indicate, but we need to know them before we claim that so knowing our users intimately is extremely important when you're working with a team as your product managers for user personas and who are your competitors. You also you can also check benchmarks you can also think about industry standards and kind of study them before you jump into testing. Create artifacts to support your future self and others. It's a way to be empathetic towards yourself and other people as well. If you're closely with your product team and get your hands on user data from your product is extremely important for a tester because our ability to investigate things is is a great asset for the team. Do not think about pass or fail, you need to dig a bit deeper. Think about the reasons motivations emotions and you know why user is thinking in a in a certain way. My concern is not only about the usability of the application or how much money it is making but also about the well being and safety of my of my users. So reading is something that is extremely important to read about humans, philosophy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, folklore anthropology, you know, skies the limit, all of this will help you in understanding human beings better their context better what they think how they feel and why they think or feel in a certain way. It's extremely important. And of course you need to challenge biases and assumptions on a daily basis to be a more empathetic tester. Thank you so much. I'm happy to take any questions. If you have them. They are no questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.