Empathy and the Design Process

The topic of empathy has been circling around for quite some time, particularly since it’s one of the pillars of the Design Thinking Process (established under the “Understand” component of the process). Empathy is also a topic that keeps being written about from multiple Authors, who try to emphasize the fact that Designers are only successful when they empathize and fully embrace the users they’re creating a solution for. The idea for this article sprung up, not because I want to demystify what others have written so well, but mostly because I want to empirically showcase what I’ve observed from going through multiple Product Design teams and applications/software products deployed to the market, and what role Empathy truly played. Also as a highlight, I highly recommend a thorough read on this article hailing from the phenomenal Don Norman on the topic of Empathy. It’s a testament to a different perspective on the concept of Empathy in Design from a genial author. (https://theblog.adobe.com/why-i-dont-believe-in-empathic-design-don-norman/ )

Empathy and the Design Thinking Process. Wikipedia defines “empathy” as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively?explicit?manner”. Typically when defined within the Design Thinking Process, “Empathy” is showcased in parallel with the Problem Definition component of that Method. Empathy is typically associated with a series of tactics which allow Designers, and the teams embarking on the solution driven journey, to fully grasp the users and consumers they are building the solution for. Don Norman in his article which I have mentioned above, states that it is somewhat impossible for Designers and Product Design teams, to actually empathize and truly understand what most users go through when using the product being conceived. He states “If I’m designing a medical rehabilitation device for a unique person, I could argue it’s crucial to really understand their likes and dislikes, their personality and issues, and how they approach the world. But that’s relatively rare. Most of the time, in our field, we’re devising products and services that are being used by lots of people — hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions.” Personally I think he’s quite accurate in that assessment. In most cases Designers and the Product Design Teams, embark on journeys, where they hopefully get insight into the various characters that will be using the product, but even with a great level of empathy, only through much research, testing, iterating, refinement, can a solution be successfully reached and eventually deployed. It’s important that Designers and Product Teams are empathetic, firstly because that allows them to have the willingness to observe, listen and learn, but that quality or trait, should never be mistaken for accuracy in research, and truly grasping what users go through when using a product (which includes their experiences before reaching the product, during utilization, and post usage). Empathy does not qualify a Designer as a proxy for an actual user. Users operate within specific constraints of their social and economic ecosystem, their actions are conditioned by a multitude of factors, many of which are at first glance unknown to the Product Design teams. It’s crucial that Research surfaces this and many other topics, providing insight into Client Journeys (with all that it entails, from product journeys, to competitive analysis, pain points, industry trends, among many other factors), common and edge scenarios, repetitive tasks, errors. In illustrating my current Design Thinking process, I have shifted the concept of “Empathy” to Research and Client /User Journey Definition, and placed it under the larger umbrella of “Discoverability”. In the past I was part of a large Product Design Team working on a fitness application being sold worldwide. That application had a goal to capture a multitude of characters/users, across multiple geographical locations, while abiding to very specific factors such as ergonomics, multiculturalism, diverse demographics, social-economics, among many other factors. We worked from the US and ideated, iterated on solutions for a worldwide audience, based on research that we did, which allowed us to get insight into what users truly wanted from the product (across multiple locations and how users utilized the product in different countries). It was a lengthy process with a lot of discussions, prototypes, testing, refinement, with particular considerations on scalability, accessibility (contrast ratios for instance), omni channel experiences, cross branding opportunities, among many other factors. Empathy played a role in the sense that it allowed us to be sensible and understand the feedback that we were receiving, but we would have ultimately failed, if we had relied solely and exclusively on what we as a team deemed correct, from our own point of view, and didn’t observe what multiple testing groups and users across the world were telling us.?

Outcomes, Reality Check. Mr. Norman in his article further writes “The type of design that I’ve been advocating for years, the human-centered design process, means that we actually must go out and understand what the real issues are and what people’s real needs are in order to design something”. Again, his assessment is succinctly perfect. Research allows us to gain insight into the users and potential clients we’re targeting. At times Designers and their Product Design Teams are constrained in their outreach of those users/clients, having to ultimately resort to methodologies such as FAST UX (which stands for Focus, Attendance, Summarization and Translation). These methodologies use proxies and at times different sources of information (which include customer support professionals, metrics, user reviews, sales professionals) in order to build substance and edify these characters who will be using the product being devised. But even with limitations, Empathy is ultimately not the factor that allows for a solution to be successful. We should aim to be empathetic, since that allows us to be more humane and hopefully make life as a whole, a far more interesting journey for us all, but as far as Product Design is concerned, we should aim to truly understand our users, their journeys, scenarios, when ultimately creating and devising solutions.

I’ll conclude with the following quote, from Theodore Roosevelt on the topic of empathy:

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care?”.?