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Unit 3: EMPATHY - Deep Human Understanding with AI Support - Practice Quiz

CSD233 — Design Thinking 60 Questions
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1 In the Design Thinking process, what does empathy primarily help designers to do?

Empathy in Design Process – It's Importance Easy
A. Increase the speed of coding
B. Reduce the cost of production
C. Finalize the marketing budget
D. Understand users' needs, emotions, and experiences

2 Empathy is typically the __ stage in the Design Thinking process.

Empathy in Design Process – It's Importance Easy
A. Third
B. Last
C. First
D. Fifth

3 The empathetic approach in design borrows heavily from which social science discipline?

Roots in Ethnography Easy
A. Astronomy
B. Ethnography
C. Economics
D. Geology

4 Ethnography mainly involves studying people by:

Roots in Ethnography Easy
A. Analyzing stock prices
B. Running laboratory experiments only
C. Reading old textbooks only
D. Observing them in their real-life context

5 Empathetic immersion refers to:

Empathetic Immersion Easy
A. Ignoring users to save time
B. Focusing only on competitor products
C. Only reading survey reports
D. Experiencing situations from the user's perspective

6 How can AI assist designers when analyzing many user interviews?

Using AI for thematic analysis of interviews Easy
A. By identifying common themes and patterns quickly
B. By preventing note-taking
C. By replacing users entirely
D. By deleting all interview data

7 Thematic analysis of interviews is used to:

Using AI for thematic analysis of interviews Easy
A. Count how many chairs are in a room
B. Schedule delivery routes
C. Calculate profit margins
D. Group similar ideas into meaningful themes

8 A persona in design thinking is best described as:

Creating Personas & Scenarios Easy
A. A legal contract
B. A fictional character representing a user type
C. A software license
D. A real employee of the company

9 A scenario in design thinking typically describes:

Creating Personas & Scenarios Easy
A. A list of programming languages
B. The office seating plan
C. The company's annual revenue
D. How a persona uses a product in a situation

10 A customer journey map visually represents:

Customer Journey Mapping Easy
A. The salary of employees
B. The source code of an app
C. The steps a customer takes while interacting with a product or service
D. The company's office layout

11 Which of the following is commonly captured in a customer journey map?

Customer Journey Mapping Easy
A. The competitor's tax records
B. The building's electrical wiring
C. The CEO's daily schedule
D. Customer emotions at each stage

12 A service blueprint differs from a journey map because it also shows:

Maps & Blueprints Easy
A. Only the company logo
B. The weather forecast
C. The customer's home address
D. Behind-the-scenes processes that support the service

13 Which is a key strength of using AI to support empathy work?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Easy
A. Feeling genuine human emotions
B. Processing large amounts of user data quickly
C. Replacing all human designers
D. Eliminating the need for users

14 Which of the following is a risk of relying too much on AI for empathy?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Easy
A. Losing genuine human understanding and nuance
B. Better pattern detection
C. Handling large datasets
D. Faster data processing

15 In design thinking, 'insighting' refers to:

Importance of Insighting Easy
A. Setting the product price
B. Designing the company logo
C. Discovering deeper meanings from user observations
D. Writing the final source code

16 When interviewing users to gain insights, it is best to ask:

Insighting through Interviews Easy
A. Only yes/no questions
B. Open-ended questions
C. No questions at all
D. Questions about your own opinions

17 An empathy map typically captures what a user:

Developing Empathy Map & Journey Map Easy
A. Buys, sells, and trades
B. Codes, tests, and deploys
C. Earns, spends, and saves
D. Says, thinks, does, and feels

18 The main purpose of building an empathy map is to:

Developing Empathy Map & Journey Map Easy
A. Increase advertising revenue
B. Design the company website colors
C. Better understand the user's perspective
D. Calculate shipping costs

19 In design thinking, defining the problem means:

Defining Problem Through Lens of Design Thinking Easy
A. Setting employee salaries
B. Framing a clear, user-centered problem statement
C. Choosing the programming language
D. Selecting office furniture

20 A 'How Might We' (HMW) statement is used to:

'Point of View' Statement & 'How Might We' Statement Easy
A. Record the final budget
B. List all competitors
C. Describe hardware specifications
D. Frame challenges as opportunities for ideation

21 A design team building a healthcare app skips talking to elderly patients and relies only on their own assumptions about usability. Which core benefit of empathy in the design process are they most likely to lose?

Empathy in Design Process – It's Importance Medium
A. Automatically increasing marketing budget
B. Reducing the total lines of code required
C. Uncovering unstated user needs and hidden pain points
D. Guaranteeing faster server response times

22 Design empathy borrows heavily from ethnography. Which practice best reflects an ethnographic approach applied to design research?

Roots in Ethnography Medium
A. Observing users in their natural context to understand behavior
B. Copying a competitor's feature list directly
C. Analyzing only quarterly sales spreadsheets
D. Sending a mass automated email survey to strangers

23 A designer spends a full day using a wheelchair to understand accessibility barriers in a building. This technique is best described as:

Empathetic Immersion Medium
A. Quantitative A/B testing
B. Secondary literature review
C. Empathetic immersion through experiential participation
D. Statistical regression analysis

24 A team feeds 50 interview transcripts into an AI tool and asks it to group recurring ideas. What is the primary output they should expect from AI-assisted thematic analysis?

Using AI for thematic analysis of interviews Medium
A. A final validated product design
B. Exact user names and contact details
C. Clustered themes and recurring patterns across responses
D. A guaranteed profit forecast

25 Which of the following is the most appropriate use of a persona in design thinking?

Creating Personas & Scenarios Medium
A. A representative archetype grounded in research to guide decisions
B. A random fictional character with no data basis
C. A list of technical server requirements
D. A real customer's private medical record

26 A scenario differs from a persona primarily because a scenario:

Creating Personas & Scenarios Medium
A. Replaces the need for any user research
B. Is a numerical satisfaction score
C. Lists the persona's demographic statistics only
D. Narrates how a persona interacts with a product in a context

27 While mapping a customer journey for an online store, the team identifies a stage where users abandon their carts. This stage is best classified as a:

Customer Journey Mapping Medium
A. Persona demographic attribute
B. Positive delight moment
C. Backend database schema
D. Pain point or friction stage in the journey

28 Which set of elements is most typically captured for each stage of a customer journey map?

Customer Journey Mapping Medium
A. User actions, thoughts, emotions, and touchpoints
B. Competitor advertising budgets
C. Only the company's profit margins
D. Server uptime and code commits

29 How does a service blueprint extend a customer journey map?

Maps & Blueprints Medium
A. It removes all user-facing information
B. It adds backstage processes and support systems behind touchpoints
C. It replaces empathy with automation
D. It only shows marketing slogans

30 Which is a genuine strength of using AI to support empathy work in design?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Medium
A. Feeling authentic human emotions itself
B. Rapidly summarizing large volumes of qualitative data
C. Guaranteeing zero bias in all outputs
D. Eliminating the need for any human interpretation

31 A team relies solely on AI-generated summaries of interviews and never re-reads the raw transcripts. What is the biggest risk?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Medium
A. Users feeling overly understood
B. Interviews becoming too accurate
C. Losing nuance and inheriting AI bias or hallucinations
D. Reducing the interview count to zero automatically

32 In design thinking, an insight is best understood as:

Importance of Insighting Medium
A. A list of product features
B. A raw quote copied directly from a user
C. A non-obvious interpretation revealing why users behave a certain way
D. A count of survey respondents

33 Which statement is an insight rather than a mere observation?

Importance of Insighting Medium
A. Users clicked the skip button 40 times
B. The app launched in March
C. The tutorial has five screens
D. Users skip tutorials because they fear looking incompetent

34 During an empathy interview, which question type is most likely to surface rich, emotional insights?

Insighting through Interviews Medium
A. Open-ended questions inviting stories about experiences
B. Leading questions confirming the designer's idea
C. Multiple-choice rating questions only
D. Yes/no questions about feature preferences

35 An interviewer notices a user pause and sigh when describing a task. The best next move to deepen insight is to:

Insighting through Interviews Medium
A. End the interview to save time
B. Immediately change the subject
C. Suggest the solution the team already built
D. Ask them to tell more about that moment

36 An empathy map is typically divided into quadrants capturing what the user:

Developing Empathy Map & Journey Map Medium
A. Likes, shares, comments, and follows
B. Says, thinks, does, and feels
C. Buys, sells, rents, and returns
D. Codes, tests, ships, and deploys

37 A tension between what a user says and what they actually do is best revealed by:

Developing Empathy Map & Journey Map Medium
A. Comparing the 'Says' and 'Does' quadrants of an empathy map
B. Reading the product's source code
C. Reviewing the marketing budget
D. Counting total interviews conducted

38 Which characteristic makes a well-framed design thinking problem statement effective?

Defining Problem Through Lens of Design Thinking Medium
A. It is human-centered and free of predetermined solutions
B. It is as broad and vague as possible
C. It names the exact technology to build
D. It focuses only on business revenue targets

39 Which option shows a correctly structured Point of View (POV) statement?

'Point of View' Statement & 'How Might We' Statement Medium
A. Nurses are generally overworked people
B. Build a mobile app with a blue interface
C. Increase quarterly sales by 20 percent
D. A busy nurse needs a faster way to log data because manual entry delays patient care

40 A 'How Might We' (HMW) question phrased as 'How might we build a mobile app with push notifications?' is flawed because it:

'Point of View' Statement & 'How Might We' Statement Medium
A. Embeds a specific solution instead of staying open
B. Contains no verb at all
C. Is far too broad to act on
D. Focuses too much on user emotions

41 A design team consistently produces solutions that test well in usability labs but fail in real markets. Which underlying failure best explains this pattern from an empathy perspective?

Empathy in Design Process – It's Importance Hard
A. They used too many personas in the ideation phase
B. They failed to run enough A/B tests before launch
C. They spent excessive time on prototyping fidelity
D. They optimized for functional usability without understanding users' emotional and contextual realities

42 Design ethnography differs from academic ethnography primarily in which respect?

Roots in Ethnography Hard
A. It relies exclusively on quantitative survey data
B. It is applied and time-bounded, aimed at generating actionable design insights rather than exhaustive cultural theory
C. It requires researchers to remain fully detached observers at all times
D. It prohibits any form of participant observation

43 A researcher spends a week living the daily routine of wheelchair users to design an accessible transit app. Which risk is MOST associated with this immersion approach if not carefully managed?

Empathetic Immersion Hard
A. Eliminating all researcher bias completely
B. Projecting the researcher's own temporary experience onto users with lifelong, deeply different realities
C. Making the design process too fast to be rigorous
D. Collecting too little qualitative data to be useful

44 When using an LLM to cluster themes across 50 interview transcripts, which practice most directly protects against surfacing misleading themes?

Using AI for thematic analysis of interviews Hard
A. Accepting the highest-frequency themes as automatically most important
B. Increasing the model's temperature to encourage more creative themes
C. Feeding only summaries rather than full transcripts to save tokens
D. Validating AI-generated themes against raw quotes and having human researchers audit outliers

45 Frequency-based AI theme extraction may systematically under-represent which type of critical insight?

Using AI for thematic analysis of interviews Hard
A. Themes explicitly stated by the majority
B. The most commonly repeated complaints across users
C. Sentiment expressed in positive language
D. Rare but high-impact edge-case pain points expressed by few participants

46 A team builds a persona using only aggregated demographic averages. What is the most serious methodological flaw in this persona?

Creating Personas & Scenarios Hard
A. It describes a statistical average that may match no real user and hides behavioral diversity
B. It contains too many behavioral details to be usable
C. It focuses excessively on goals rather than demographics
D. It is grounded in too many direct user quotes

47 How does a scenario functionally differ from a persona in design thinking?

Creating Personas & Scenarios Hard
A. A scenario narrates a persona acting within a specific context and goal over time, adding situational dynamics
B. A scenario replaces the need for personas entirely
C. A scenario is a static demographic snapshot of a user
D. A scenario is only a list of technical requirements

48 In a journey map, the 'moment of truth' is best characterized as which of the following?

Customer Journey Mapping Hard
A. The average of all emotional states across the journey
B. The final purchase transaction only
C. A high-emotion touchpoint that disproportionately shapes overall perception of the experience
D. The stage with the longest duration

49 A journey map shows high satisfaction at every individual touchpoint, yet overall NPS is low. What phenomenon most likely explains this discrepancy?

Customer Journey Mapping Hard
A. The journey map has too few stages to be valid
B. Satisfaction and NPS always correlate perfectly
C. Poor cross-touchpoint transitions and cumulative friction that per-touchpoint scores miss
D. Users are lying on every individual survey

50 The key distinction between a customer journey map and a service blueprint is that the blueprint additionally exposes:

Maps & Blueprints Hard
A. Just the persona's demographic profile
B. Solely the marketing funnel conversion rates
C. Backstage processes and the 'line of visibility' separating customer-facing from internal operations
D. Only the customer's emotional highs and lows

51 Which scenario best illustrates the core risk of over-relying on AI-assisted empathy tools?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Hard
A. Treating AI-synthesized user summaries as sufficient substitutes for direct human contact, eroding genuine understanding
B. Using AI to transcribe interviews faster than manual note-taking
C. Using AI to schedule research sessions efficiently
D. Using AI to translate interviews into another language

52 An AI tool trained largely on data from one demographic is used to generate empathy insights for a diverse population. What is the primary ethical concern?

AI-assisted empathy: strengths and risks Hard
A. The tool will process data too slowly
B. Amplification of representational bias, marginalizing needs of under-represented groups
C. The tool will refuse to analyze any interviews
D. The tool will generate too many diverse personas

53 Which statement best distinguishes an 'insight' from an 'observation' in design research?

Importance of Insighting Hard
A. An insight is simply a longer description of what was observed
B. An insight is a numerical count of observed behaviors
C. An insight is any direct quote from a participant
D. An insight reveals a non-obvious underlying reason or tension behind an observed behavior

54 A strong design insight often takes the form of a surfaced tension. Which example best fits this definition?

Importance of Insighting Hard
A. Users want to eat healthily but distrust their own willpower, so they avoid buying fresh food that may spoil
B. 45% of users are between ages 25 and 34
C. The button color should be changed to green
D. Users open the app an average of 3 times per day

55 During an empathy interview, a participant says 'the checkout is fine.' The skilled interviewer's best next move is to:

Insighting through Interviews Hard
A. Suggest a specific improvement to the checkout
B. Accept the statement and move to the next scripted question
C. Ask a yes/no confirmation that checkout is satisfactory
D. Probe with 'tell me about the last time you checked out' to elicit a concrete story

56 Why are leading questions especially damaging in empathy interviews aimed at deep insighting?

Insighting through Interviews Hard
A. They generate too many unexpected findings
B. They embed the interviewer's hypothesis and bias participants toward confirming assumptions
C. They make interviews take too long to complete
D. They prevent the interviewer from taking notes

57 In a Says-Thinks-Does-Feels empathy map, discovering a gap between the 'Says' and 'Thinks/Feels' quadrants most likely signals:

Developing Empathy Map & Journey Map Hard
A. That the quadrants must always match perfectly
B. A hidden tension or social desirability effect worth investigating as a design opportunity
C. That the empathy map was filled out incorrectly and should be discarded
D. That the user is not a valid research participant

58 Which framing best reflects a well-defined design thinking problem statement?

Defining Problem Through Lens of Design Thinking Hard
A. A specific technical specification listing required features
B. A framing that names the exact product to build
C. A broad market-size projection with revenue targets
D. A human-centered, need-based framing that stays solution-agnostic and grounded in insight

59 A well-formed POV statement follows 'User + Need + Insight.' Why must the 'Need' be expressed as a verb (an action or goal) rather than a noun (a solution)?

'Point of View' Statement & 'How Might We' Statement Hard
A. To guarantee the insight is quantifiable
B. To keep the need solution-neutral so it does not prematurely constrain the design space
C. To make the statement grammatically shorter
D. To ensure the user is described demographically

60 A team writes: 'How might we build a mobile app with push notifications for busy parents?' What is the main flaw in this HMW statement?

'Point of View' Statement & 'How Might We' Statement Hard
A. It contains no verb describing an action
B. It fails to mention any user group
C. It is too broad to generate any ideas
D. It embeds a predetermined solution, narrowing ideation before exploration begins
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