On a beautiful Sunday in August 2020 Wang Man and Brigitte facilitated a Design Thinking Bootcamp for the marvellous Ladies Who Tech in Beijing. The audience, obviously was mainly women who were invited to bring their children. We set up a separate session for the children and the headline for their explorations was “Happy Family”. Gao An, our colleague at that time, guided the group of four girls. Their first task was to empathize with mothers and brainstorm about the question: What does a mum need?
This was an interesting exercise since they had never asked themselves this question. First, they approached this by doing a picture brainstorm. In any workshop this is an uplifting activity, since you browse through glossy advertisement and pick what appeals to you. As it turned out, they think mums need a lot of luxury and serenity 😉
As a next step, they collectively filled in the Empathy Map. In this context as in the corporate context, it is important to not just write down stereotypes. It is important to back up the findings with evidence and give examples for the observations. What the girls found out about the emotional state of mums was less glamorous than the result in the step before.
When mums speak, they give orders like: “Do more homework!”, “Play the piano!”, “Walk the dog!”
The lower right corner shows that the daughters see a lot of multi-tasking going on: They work, take care of the house and spend time with the family.
And what do they think? “Don’t give up!”, “Don’t lag behind!”, “I have responsibility (for the dog ;)!”, “I need time for myself!”, “I want to have fun!”
Our girls were not happy with our overall emotional state. Very often, their mothers are angry, stressed, moody and tired. Furthermore, they find us hard to understand. Fortunately, Happiness also popped up when the girls contemplated about how we might feel. Thank god!
What do your children see, think, feel and do when they look at you? We would be happy to read your comments!