The Truth About Empathic UX Design (Hint: It Doesn't Really Exist)

Some in the user experience (UX) community see and know that the term empathy often gets paired with the term UX to create the phrase "empathic UX."

This widely-used empathic UX term is popular and tends to get referenced when UX folks seek to describe utility goals, user outcomes, and whatever else as part of their UX designs.

Generally, the term 'empathic UX' is well-meaning.

There are even entire courses, including on #linkedin (Linked Learning), devoted to "designing UX with empathy" and other such titles.

This UX-empathy trend has become so pervasive in recent years that I feel compelled to point out one stark but important truth some have not seemingly considered:

"There is NO empathy in UX."

Like none.

Zilch.

Zippo.

There, I said it.

Whew!

Ok yes, I know.

Maybe you're confused or disagree but here's my take:

All the UX-anything and everything, including all that journey mapping stuff and low fidelity/high fidelity prototyping and so on, intends on finding ways to continuously iterate a product (and its features) to improve "the user experience."

The empathic-UX mantra tends to go something like: "we should adopt the user's perspective ... we should care/be passionate/have compassion about the user's experience as they navigate, search our site, purchase a product, fill out a form, and otherwise interact with a desktop or mobile application."

All good things.

Any and all UX tools deployed in these regards intend on creating seamless, frictionless experiences so that users can get to X destination or activity or a path easily and intuitively with the least amount of clicks or frustrations as possible.

Again, good things.

Yet somehow and somewhere, however, someone in the UX world managed to successfully market, brand or package these interaction design activities as "empathic."

In turn, the UX world at large seems to have readily bought into this empathic idea hook, line, and sinker; they generally do believe that UX design-related activities of high-end quality are hyper-empathic to a user's needs.

Having "empathy" for users, as a UX designer/researcher etc. has become a highly valued skill and sought-after mindset often touted as a necessary part of the 'Design Thinking ' process.

But here's where we have to PUMP the empathic brakes, so to speak.

While it all sounds nice and well-meaning, none of the above equates or translate to empathy.

True human empathy is "an other-orientated emotional response elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone else."

At least, that's one of the scholarly definitions plucked directly from The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology .

The crux of the matter here, in terms of true psychological distinction (versus the commercialized understanding of empathy), is ***WHOSE*** welfare is the focus of the emotional response?

So ... while UX folks, their corporate counterparts, and their marketing stakeholders believe or push the idea of empathic design and empathic UX practices, the unvarnished truth is that merely adopting a user's perspective is INSUFFICIENT to elicit true human empathy.

Along the same vein, identifying the user's plight in a specific situation and wanting to relieve the user of any headaches or technology kinks along their way is also INCONGRUENT to true human empathy.

Why?

The answer goes back to the "WHOSE welfare is the focus of the empathic response" aspects of the empathy definition, shared earlier.

In a non-commercial setting where true human empathy is elicited, any self-benefits that we may gain as a result of our empathic response to increasing another person's welfare are usually **UNINTENDED** CONSEQUENCES.

But in a commercial UX setting, the goal of the UX is to help the user prevent, reduce, or relieve their browsing, clicking, purchasing, or interaction pain points *** to increase self-benefits *** (by way of clicks, memberships, subscriptions, followers, sales, and/or revenues, etc.) and these increased self-benefits are **INTENTIONAL** CONSEQUENCES and highly-desirable outcomes.

In conclusion

In light of the above, I think it's prudent to start considering that empathic design — as it relates to technology interfaces — is not as empathic as we'd like to think, despite the best intentions of taking the user's goals into deep and contemplative consideration by way of persona research, journey maps, and overall Design Thinking process.

The ultimate goal of true human empathy is to increase the welfare of another; UX design folks seem to have this part of the empathy equation fairly aligned, to some degree.

But it's THE OTHER HALF of the human empathy equation that mucks everything up; because it's not enough to want to increase the welfare of another.

In occasions of real empathy, ANY self-benefits we may gain in our empathic response(s) should be unintentional or happenstance, at best.

With UX empathic design, however, any empathy baked into the interface intends very specific self-benefits to the commercial entity deploying or paying for the UX to begin with.

Please do note that I'm not against companies wanting to seamlessly or slickly design their products to increase their self-benefits.

What I am advocating for instead is for the empathic design moniker to be relabeled as "commercial courtesy design (CCD)" ... or "transactional convenience design (TCD)" or whatever other name or acronym may be more appropriate.

Because in the end, UXD or UX Design is not ... repeat *NOT* ... as authentically empathic as most think it to be, for reasons cited.

Perhaps some may think I'm splitting hairs?

But when we're speaking of genuine human empathy, and the diluted, commercialized interpretations of this vital and emotional human response, then someone has to.

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Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, MA, MFA is a Cyberpsychologist, Positive Media Psychologist, and Behavior Designer with more than 25 years of senior digital strategy, marketing technology design, content development, and creative direction experience under her belt. Learn more here .

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