The Empathy Gap: When Companies Fail to Connect with Users

?? Welcome to #GetUX edition 15 where we discuss the empathy gap.

Key points

• Emotions are often overlooked as a factor in rational decision making process
• 90% of businesses think this "human element" is important, but 56% of users think that companies aren’t in touch with it
• The gap can be bridged by implementing an inclusive design mindset, researching problems and defining users well, and tweaking ideas

Consider a newly minted, popular investment object —?perhaps a certain art form or a digital asset —?and think about how it propagates in society. Chances are, several media outlets will extol its readers to the benefits of investing in it. More and more people will buy in and generate hype.

The problem? The item itself doesn't have any intrinsically valuable or function. Its value is what its buyers gave it — but it was entirely reliant on hype.

It’s easily predictable what comes next: time goes on. The next shiny thing comes in. Fewer and fewer people buy into the original hype. Because the item can't actually stand on its own, it vaporized.

People lose money.

Crashes like this appear from time to time. Many hype cycles have appeared on the market, making winners and losers of us all.

But why, though?

It appears that there is a bias that comes into play here: projection bias. One of the form that it takes is assuming that other people share the same beliefs, values, and worldviews as ours. The example above shows how projection bias, in this aspect, comes into play. The buying decision is a kind of fear-of-missing-out (FOMO); exactly the kind that propels hype.

Also, we are familiar with economic models that are based on the assumption that people will make rational decisions. Based on such an assumption, we then make predictions of other people’s behavior. Companies, for example, may try to appeal to certain demographics by doing things or creating ads that they think will appeal to them, but may in fact miss the mark.

All these taken together form a gap: the empathy gap. We may think that emotions don't influence rational decision making. Or we miss the mark by forgetting that users use emotions to influence their rational decision making.

The empathy gap explains why around 90% of companies appreciate how important it is to have a human touch in doing their business; but around 59% of customers think that the companies have lost precisely that touch.

So what actually happens here? How can we bridge the gap, so to speak?

Understanding how emotions affect decisions

Emotion, at its very core, is an important survival mechanism. Just like how we rely on our bipedal legs to walk, our emotions tell us when something is going wrong — or going right. Emotions help us quickly condense an experience into something that can inform our decisions so that we can rapidly respond to a given situation.

See lion, feel fear — not see lion, count its teeth. And so on.

Emotions are, therefore, very important — to say the least — in rational decision making processes. Emotional and rational thinking are not opposing forces; in reality, they work in tandem, with emotions providing the initial impetus for action, which is then refined and directed by logical considerations. Intuition, quite often powered by emotions, can lead to creative solutions that pure logic might overlook.

So, in effect, emotions are core to how humans think in general. Even for things that are usually considered rational. Companies can usually miss out on this opportunity if they think that humans are purely rational decision makers.

How can we then bridge this gap then?

Bridging the empathy gap

Bridging this gap requires extensive knowledge of the users of your product. A good starting point is to ensure that the problems are well-researched and the users, well-defined.

Implement an inclusive design mindset

Inclusive design describes a set of methodologies to create products that understand and enable people of all backgrounds and abilities. Adopting it improves accessibility, ensures solutions actually do work for diverse users, and promote team empathy and understanding.

For example, an oft-forgotten group of users are the elderly. Does your product perform well for the elderly? Learn more about designing for the elderly in #GetUX 09.

Research the users & problems well

To actually reveal what users felt when they use your product, you'll need to understand their context — preferably in real-life settings. Designers, when they're given time and resources, often prefer to start from here to gain a deep understanding of the users and the problems your product will solve.

You can ask these questions to begin a research note:

• What are the problems? Do they actually exist?
• For whom do these problems occur?

Standard tools of the trade for UX researchers apply here: interviews, ethnographic studies, contextual inquiries... Taken together, they uncover what the problems actually are and whether your product solves the problem at hand. Ones that users actually need solving.

Define them well, too

After researching the market, the next challenge comes in the forming of a conclusion. Defining the user and the problem takes many forms.

• User personas help — these are simplified, condensed, research-based profile of potential users
• Empathy mapping brings clarity to where the concerns of a certain user group is located; it uses quadrants to map between what users say, think, do or feel
• Problem statements help define the problem in a focused and simplified manner

Do note that performing a definition correctly is not that easy because even interpreting the research results accurately requires expertise. Consequences of a wrong interpretation would derail a startup or feature launch — that is, ending up with disengaged users, or worse, not attracting attention at all.

We at Maturis provide a simple solution. When you need help with this, get in touch with us and we’ll help you see more clearly. One of our edges against competing agencies is our UX research strength — our UXR lead, Amira, is trained in London, with a Master's in Psychology.

Tweak the idea

You've found the problem and defined the user. Probably, you already have an idea in mind on how to solve the problem. Now let's switch the focus:

• Does an idea actually solve the problem?

At this point, you see that further research is needed to validate or invalidate the idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen; whether they solve problems or not, and executed well, are key. Further improvements can be made on workable ideas and more research can be done on failing ones.

Conclusion

People tend to underestimate the role that emotions play in rational decision making. This comes from inherent human biases as well as a systemic effect from our economic models. The gap between the importance of emotions and its recognition is called the empathy gap. It can be mitigated by using user-centered design processes: implementing an inclusive design mindset, researching and defining well, and tweaking ideas.

Maturis is a UI/UX consultancy creating tasteful and tested designs aiming to propel startup growth. Ready to get your ideas to the next level? Get in touch with us through LinkedIn Messages now.

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