Video summary

Problem Validation - Ismail Akbani

Main summary

Key takeaways

Educational

Main ideas & lessons (Problem Definition via empathy)

  • The session’s goal is to help learners understand and appreciate four steps of problem definition:
    • Identification
    • Validation
    • Analysis
    • Definition
  • A key principle emphasized is: you must understand the customer’s problem more than you focus on building the solution.
  • Empathy is presented as the foundation of problem definition because the product/service is made for the customer, not for the team/company.
  • Empathy must be deepened from merely recognizing pain to actively aiming to relieve it—this is where compassion enters.

Concepts explained through examples

Empathy in business (mother/child food example)

  • Like a mother welcoming a child by cooking food, a business must “cook the right solution” for the customer’s preferences, not the business’s own preferences.
  • Common failure mode: products that “seem messy” or content that feels wrong to the audience because creators were designing from their own perspective or for the wrong customer group.

Paying customer = real validation

  • A startup’s success and sustainability depend on having paying customers.
  • A customer pays only if the offering solves the problem in a way the customer expects.
  • The “flu tablet vs injection” analogy clarifies: even if multiple solutions treat the same issue, the customer’s preferred solution quality matters.

Customer empathy: levels and “types”

1) Empathy vs sympathy vs pity (progression)

  • Pity: Acknowledge suffering/pain (emotion of “what’s wrong?”) but remains superficial.
  • Sympathy: Care for the pain, but only limited concern; often “lip service” without deep understanding or action.
  • Empathy: Acknowledge + care + understand and feel what the customer is going through.

2) Compassion (next step beyond empathy)

  • Compassion: Empathy + the desire to relieve suffering.
  • For entrepreneurs: compassion means iterating/pivoting/tweaking until the customer’s problem is genuinely solved—without becoming overly attached to “my product.”

3) Cognitive vs emotional (Paul Ekman reference)

  • Cognitive empathy: Understand what the other person is thinking/feeling (reasoning/mental state).
  • Emotional empathy: Actually feel the other person’s emotions (emotion transferred/experienced).
  • The session argues that emotional understanding alone isn’t enough unless it leads to compassion (action).

“Key aspects” of empathy mapping (detailed methodology)

The speaker explains practical empathy mapping as capturing what the customer:

  1. Says
    • From interviews and direct conversations
    • From social media comments, posts, “trolling,” blogs, videos, etc.
  2. Hears
    • What the customer is exposed to daily in the context of the offering
    • Example: people hear “bad jokes/memes” about webinars; to counter this, they promoted it as “non-webinar” to reset expectations and reduce resistance.
  3. Does
    • What the customer actually does may differ from what they claim they want to do
    • Example: most people say exercise/gym is important, but few actually go.
    • This difference is framed as a powerful way to identify problems (the gap between intention and behavior).
  4. Thinks
    • More accurately captured by immersion/first-hand experience
  5. Feels
    • Again, best understood by immersion—how the customer experiences the situation emotionally.

The speaker summarizes the empathy map as a way to capture these elements visually so you don’t rely only on notes or assumptions.

How to use the empathy map (step-by-step workflow)

  • Before interviews (prepare questions)
    • Decide whom you will interview (e.g., 10 people).
    • Use the empathy map framework to draft/prepare questions that probe:
      • what they say/hear/do/feel/think.
  • During and after interviews (download insights)
    • Collect interview/observation notes and recordings.
    • Team process:
      • Print an A3/A2 empathy map on a wall.
      • Use sticky notes to place extracted statements into the Says/Does/Hears/Feels/Thinks sections.
    • Then converge as a team on:
      • Key/high-impact quotes or insights
      • Repeated patterns
      • What is not relevant to the problem you’re solving
  • Output
    • Turn qualitative evidence into structured understanding.
    • Use empathy map insights to guide problem definition and later steps (validation/analysis/definition).

Customer journey mapping (how it complements empathy mapping)

  • Journey mapping helps understand the broader context of the customer problem over time.
  • Example: for healthcare
    • Not just what happens inside the hospital
    • Also include what happens:
      • Before (searching online for doctors, booking cab, consulting friends/ratings)
      • Inside
      • After (recovery/post-hospital experiences in the next week)
  • The session emphasizes an “unfair advantage” when startups cover parts most competitors ignore (before/after stages).

Immersion: methodology for deeper understanding

The session’s immersion definition

  • Empathy collection has three modes:
    1. Engagement: direct interaction/interviews (online or offline)
    2. Observation: watch people in their context doing things
    3. Immersion: “role-play”/experience the customer’s situation more directly

Examples of immersion

  • Seniors using a gym designed for younger people:
    • Engage and observe, but immersion means “becoming” that senior user to notice constraints firsthand.
  • IDEO emergency-room example (classic case study):
    • Team member pretended to be an injured patient with hidden recording devices.
    • Discovery: patients focused on trivial sensory details (like boring ceiling) that mattered emotionally.
    • Result: small design changes (e.g., colorful visuals) improved the experience.
  • Online immersion example:
    • To understand online teaching from the learner’s perspective: the trainer runs a webinar and observes participants’ reactions (cameras off, boredom thoughts, attention patterns).
    • The speaker argues that “feeling firsthand” yields insights you won’t get from surface interviews.

Remote empathy during COVID/social distancing (adaptation strategy)

  • The speaker frames COVID as both challenge and opportunity:
    • Challenge: harder to get certain types of immersion offline (e.g., you can’t easily enter many gyms).
    • Opportunity: online interviewing made feasible at scale.
  • Reasons online interviewing became easier:
    • People are more accustomed to video calls now.
    • Recruitment can happen across regions using networks.
    • Language/tech barriers exist but can be mitigated (e.g., WhatsApp for non-Zoom users).
  • Advantages claimed:
    • Faster pace of interviews (can do multiple remotely).
    • Often easier to record interviews and revisit them for additional insights.
    • Online can enable more interviews with fewer logistical delays.

Surveys vs interviews (instructional guidance)

  • The speaker supports using surveys primarily as a filter, not as the foundation for product/service decisions.
  • Why surveys can mislead:
    • Respondents may treat questions casually (tick-box behavior).
    • Context may be misunderstood because you can’t explain the scenario fully in a survey.
    • Data may be “rubbish” or low-effort, leading to wrong decisions.
  • Why one-on-one interviews are stronger:
    • People commit time and take it seriously.
    • Interviewers can clarify misunderstanding in real time.
    • You can infer seriousness/intent from how the person responds.
  • Practical recommendation:
    • Use short/basic survey questions to identify likely target segments (e.g., who actually goes to the gym).
    • Then conduct deeper interviews with that shortlisted group.

Empathy as a core competency in technology startups (how it must permeate)

  • Empathy is not just a concept used once in research; it must become strategic and operational throughout the company.
  • The speaker argues empathy must be embedded in every business layer:
    • Marketing/advertising tone and messaging
    • Pricing (must fit customer realities)
    • After-sales service
    • Call center/wait time experience
    • Employee/customer/vendor relationships
  • Warning:
    • Many organizations “cherry-pick” empathy (only performing empathy tasks that are convenient).
    • If empathy isn’t consistent across the whole “treatment package,” it fails.

Speakers / sources featured

  • Speaker: Professor Ismail Akbani (Head of Innovation and Linkages, Symbiosis Technology Business Incubator)
  • Source referenced: Paul Ekman (classification of empathy into categories such as cognitive/emotional)

Original video