references/methods-empathize.md

# Empathize method cards

Choose methods from the learning question; do not run a catalog tour. Source families match `method-registry.json`.

## Beginner's Mindset — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** expertise or solution fixation makes the team complete the story too quickly. **Do:** list what you think you know, convert it into inspectable assumptions, notice judgments and contradictions, and approach the setting with deliberate curiosity. **Output:** assumption/attention memo. **Avoid:** performative ignorance or discarding useful expertise.

## What? How? Why? — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** interpreting an image, observation, transcript, or workflow. **Do:** separate factual description (`What?`), process/means (`How?`), and tentative motive/meaning (`Why?`). Mark Why as inference and list alternatives. **Output:** layered observation record. **Avoid:** presenting inferred motive as observed fact.

## Interview Preparation — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** preparing flexible human inquiry. **Do:** define a learning goal, topics rather than a rigid script, story prompts, neutral follow-ups, Solution Blackout, consent, and stop conditions. **Output:** interview guide. **Avoid:** exhaustive questionnaires and concept-selling.

## Interview for Empathy — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** stories, meanings, decisions, and workarounds matter. **Do:** ask about the last concrete incident, sequence, environment, feelings, contradictions, and what happened next. **Output:** traceable transcript/notes. **Avoid:** relying on hypothetical preference or general opinion.

## Contextual Inquiry — `supplemental_design_practice`

**Use when:** work cannot be understood away from its tools and setting. **Do:** observe in context while the participant explains actual activity; treat the participant as expert, ask at natural breaks, capture sequence, artifacts, interruptions, and workarounds. **Output:** workflow and breakdown map. **Avoid:** turning the session into a retrospective interview or disrupting high-risk work.

## Observation — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** behavior, environment, or informal process may differ from description. **Do:** plan scope/consent, record actions and context without guessing motive, and capture exceptions. **Output:** observation records. **Avoid:** covert or unsafe observation and population generalization.

## Immersion — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** first-person exposure to constraints can reveal questions. **Do:** experience a relevant process safely, keep a reflexive log, and compare with actual participants. **Output:** hypotheses and questions. **Avoid:** claiming temporary simulation equals another person's lived experience.

## Extreme Users — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** amplified needs or adaptations could reveal mechanisms. **Do:** recruit or study meaningful behavioral extremes and compare with mainstream contexts. **Output:** amplified needs/workarounds. **Avoid:** treating extremes as representative or as spectacle.

## Journey Mapping — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** a problem unfolds across time, channels, people, or emotional states. **Do:** ground steps in evidence and map triggers, actions, touchpoints, actors, thoughts/feelings, breakdowns, workarounds, and unresolved gaps. In `VISIBLE` view, show the step sequence and contested transitions; in `WORKSHOP` view, render a provenance-aware `PROCESS_MAP` and state when a step is assumed rather than observed. **Output:** evidence-linked journey. **Avoid:** drawing a fictional “happy path” from team opinion.

**Participatory route:** invite one remembered step, handoff, breakdown, or unknown transition at a time. Use `NOVICE_ASSISTED` guidance by default for a joining user and never promote their reconstruction from `USER_PROVIDED` to observed behavior.

## Stakeholder Mapping — `supplemental_design_practice`

**Use when:** beneficiaries, decision makers, implementers, payers, blockers, or burden holders differ. **Do:** map relationships, authority, incentives, information, dependency, benefit, burden, and absent voices. Use a structured relationship table in V1; do not misrepresent it as a rendered process sequence. **Output:** stakeholder/system map. **Avoid:** flattening power into equal circles.

## Story Share and Capture — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** a team must synthesize fieldwork without losing traceability. **Do:** share one participant/story at a time; capture observations, quotes, surprises, tensions, and questions on separate records with source IDs. **Output:** inspectable evidence wall. **Avoid:** early themes that erase the story.

## Analogous Experiences — `public_design_practice`

**Use when:** another setting shares a relevant mechanism. **Do:** name the mechanism (handoff, queue, trust, recovery), research the analogous setting, and record similarities/differences. **Output:** transferable hypotheses. **Avoid:** copying surface features or treating analogy as proof.

## Assumption Mapping — `supplemental_design_practice`

**Use when:** many beliefs compete for limited research time. **Do:** place assumptions by importance and evidence, identify high-importance/low-evidence items, and design learning moves. **Output:** prioritized assumption map. **Avoid:** false precision or equating team confidence with evidence.

**Participatory route:** place one assumption per turn; coach the difference between confidence and evidence in plain language, then record the user's placement without treating it as validation.

## Inquiry Lab — `mightshape_original`

**Use when:** domain research, synthetic inquiry, human interview support, analogous inquiry, or Reality Check is needed. **Do:** follow `inquiry-lab.md`. **Output:** Reality Packets, studies, interviews, findings, and explicit provenance. **Avoid:** fake empathy or synthetic-to-human promotion.

## Research Planning — `mightshape_original`

**Use when:** a decision needs a coherent evidence strategy. **Do:** connect decision, learning questions, participants/contexts, meaningful variation, methods, capture, consent/privacy, analysis, limitations, and stop condition. **Output:** research plan. **Avoid:** research activity without a decision or learning purpose.