Event Details

We tend to think we are rational when it comes to making decisions, but our emotions rule! Innovation consultancy Veryday has worked jointly with organizations both big and small, including several Fortune 100 companies, to define a method for capturing users’ feelings in a multitude of situations called Emotional Experience Mapping. This workshop will guide participants through a hands-on experience of how the method works.

Ultimately we need to assign meaning to what we do and, as such, feelings are incredibly valuable in assessing user satisfaction. By capturing emotions in real-time, we are able to reach deeper insights about what really matters to users. These insights are crucial when developing and implementing new services or products within healthcare environments.

This is a hands-on workshop in which participants will create an Emotional Experience Map based on a re-enactment of a healthcare scenario. An Emotional Experience Map captures the spectrum of user emotions throughout an experience. Before an experience occurs, a person makes decisions based on the anticipated experience and the expected memories she thinks will stem from that experience. During the
experience, a person has a number of emotions that move through the spectrum like waves, representing what she is feeling in the present. After an experience, a person tells the story of the experience, a story that tends to focus on the dominant feelings, or the highs and lows, of the experience – a theory called peak rule and end rule. The idea is that people tend to remember the highs and lows of the experience and predominantly use those memories in the retelling of the experience.

For the workshop, we will choose a common healthcare scenario that all participants can relate to, such as a doctor’s visit for an annual physical. Participants will be divided into two groups: actors who will re-enact the scenario playing the various roles - patient, physician, nurse, etc.; and researchers who will be tasked with capturing notes and photos throughout the experience. Before, during and after the doctor’s visit, the researchers will probe the actors about how they are feeling at key moments. Emotions will be captured with multi-media tools and will be used to create an Emotional Experience Map. We will then work together to ideate around potential opportunities for new product and service solutions that could better meet the needs of the users during the doctor’s visit. After the workshop, each participant will receive  a digital capture of the Map as well as a basic set of tools to conduct this type of research within their organization.

Current methods, such as quantitative research and qualitative observations, of addressing the needs of users only get us so far.  It’s only when we can understand users’ emotions on a deeper level that we can truly start addressing the hidden potential of creating user-centric solutions that transform healthcare. This highly collaborative session that will address the needs of multiple stakeholders will do just that.