Thanks Buster! Good question, and it’s possible we could get into a discussion of semantics. What really is the word empathy? But trying… Could I get to a place where I could empathize with a soldier? I’ve never been a soldier. I’m not going to fear for my life in Iraq or be trying to defend someone in Afghanistan. I don’t think I can “empathize” with that soldier. I don’t think I really can ever empathize with someone unless I’ve truly walked a mile in their shoes. And a mile is an important distinction there too. I don’t think I can just sleep outside in the cold for a night and truly empathize with someone who’s homeless all day every day.

That being said, I think it’s important to try and manufacture more experiences to become more well rounded. And it is possible to get into more situations than I think we realize. We can do things like try to survive on a “living” wage. We could force ourselves to do that for a month, and we’d walk away with some empathy. But still, we wouldn’t get that whole experience of having to live like that for months and years.

Empathy seems more like a scale. Isn’t quite a binary thing of having it or not having it. We can can and should try to get as far as we can on the scale towards the people we’re trying to help and design products for, but it’s going to be tough to get all the way there often. But any effort to try is sure going to beat just sitting around interviewing people trying to understand them from the comfort of the interviewer’s chair.