Walk-a-mile immersion template

Use this template to build empathy with users so that your proposed solutions address their wants and needs from an informed perspective.

If you can begin to understand people’s experience and motivations, you will better understand their needs. The walk-a-mile immersion exercise encourages you to immerse yourself in the world of your users — whether that means donning the equipment someone uses and performing a task, artificially altering one or more of your senses, foregoing (or perhaps experiencing) some of life’s luxuries, or even living among people of a different society.

The walk-a-mile immersion template helps you:

• Empathize with people whose experiences are different from your own
• Make better-informed decisions
• Craft solutions that more accurately reflect the needs of your users

How to use the walk-a-mile template

To get the most out of the walk-a-mile immersion template, follow the steps outlined below.

1. Outline the goal

The first step is to have a strong enough idea of the problem you’re trying to solve with your investigation that you can sum it up in a phrase, or 1-2 sentences. Make sure everyone on your team is aligned and has the appropriate context before you begin.

2. Plan the investigation

Your investigation will need to consider at least six variables to give a holistic impression of user experience and foster a better understanding of user needs:

• Whose experience do you want to replicate?
• What tasks and activities will you perform?
• What is needed to run a simulation?
• What’s the best location to do the simulation?
• What levels of access or permissions are needed?
• What materials and tools are needed to capture what you see?

Use this section of the template to plan for each of the above, with color-coded sticky notes.

3. Begin your walk-a-mile immersion

Once you have a good sense of the variables and have thought through things like access and permissions, it’s time to begin your simulation. Use the template sections to assign a primary and secondary notetaker, record the date, time, and location, and capture all your notes and feedback from the experience.

4. Curate and analyze your key takeaways

Having run your simulation, it’s now time to collect and analyze your key takeaways from the experience. Look for things that challenged your assumptions, or themes that emerged during your experiment, and collect them into groups using color-coding and tags for sticky notes where appropriate.

Tips for running a walk-a-mile immersion template exercise

To run a successful walk-a-mile immersion workshop, you should:

• Develop a clear goal and persona that you’re trying to understand and empathize with, so that your immersive experience is as accurate as possible
• Use sticky notes, images, GIFs, or even video to help capture the experience in a holistic way
• Analyze your feedback and use it to directly inform action items, which can be developed in the same mural and shared for transparency and alignment