The ROI of empathy
‘Adela’ is a fictional character or persona that was carefully constructed out of real-world observations and deep empathy. She’s the archetype of a user, with specific behaviours and motivations, that has helped a consortium of rural business owners and employees to visualise, prototype and successfully launch seamless sets of experiences for high-end niche travellers, together with the organisational structures and arrangements required to operate and support them.
Laser-focus on ‘Adela’s needs and goals’ has generated new, returning customers and significant returns on shareholder investment.
Decisions about product design, capital investment and risk are easier to make when you deeply know who you’re designing for, and you’re not guessing about their problems and aspirations. ‘Adela’ emerged from a non-linear process that was rolled out in 3 workshops over a 4-month period, which broadly comprised: modelling and mapping of consortium partner and employee roles, responsibilities and interconnections; customer persona creation and empathy mapping; teasing out “jobs to be done”; product prototyping; customer journey and experience mapping.
In the long run, ‘Adela’ has delivered, in the client’s own words, “sustainable competitive advantage through internal processes that are invisible to competitors (impossible to imitate), which improved decision-making and reduced costs associated with bad decisions”.
![Adela @Kitchentablepolicymaker [Orla de Díez]](https://kitchentablepolicymaker.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/20140311_la-experiencia-mh-detalles_051-copy.jpg)
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