Unpacking Empathetic Design: Practical Design Strategies for Impact in Underserved Communities
In my previous article, we talked about why empathetic design is so important when creating solutions for underserved communities. Now, we’re going to take a closer look, turning those theories into practical strategies, inspired by real-world examples.
These communities might not have a lot of material wealth, but they’re rich in experiences and unique perspectives that designers can learn from. Here are some effective strategies to harness that richness:
Leveraging Groundwork Research
Every design process should start with groundwork research. This means living in the communities you’re designing for, getting involved in their activities, understanding their everyday routines, and listening to their stories.
Opay, a Nigerian fintech company, is a great example of this. Before developing their digital payment app, they spent time with people, observing and understanding their daily financial transactions, habits, challenges, and the larger financial ecosystem.
The insights they gleaned shaped the creation of what is probably now the most widely used and accepted digital wallet service across rural and urban settings Nigeria.
Groundwork research can involve focus groups, interviews, and working with community representatives who have the trust of their peers. This helps designers to truly understand and connect with the community, leading to designs that are empathetic rather than sympathetic.
Co-Designing alongside the Community
The principle “nothing about us, without us” should guide every design process. In other words, the community should be involved in designing the solutions that they will use.
Nigerian agri-tech companies, Farmcrowdy and ThriveAgric, embody this principle by integrating farmers into their entire process. As a result, they’ve developed platforms and solutions that reflect and improve upon farmers everyday lives, solve for their most pressing challenges and are not only well-accepted but deeply valued and efficiently utilised by the farming community.
Involving the community in co-designing engenders a deep sense of ownership, enhancing acceptance and building trust in the final product, as it truly reflects their lived realities.
Prioritising Inclusive Solutions
Inclusive design necessitates an adaptation of our strategies to the needs and realities of the community. This could mean prioritizing accessibility, creating interfaces in local languages, or incorporating features that respect the unique socio-cultural contexts of the users.
An excellent example of this is uLesson, an EdTech company in Nigeria. Aware of the constraints faced by many Nigerian students, such as frequent power outages and limited internet access, uLesson offers offline learning materials, ensuring no student is left behind due to infrastructural limitations.
The goal shouldn't always be to create a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather, to create flexible, inclusive designs that can be customised to cater to different community segments.
Investing in Capacity Building
Empowering users is an essential cornerstone of empathetic design. This might take shape as educating people on how to navigate the product, providing user manuals in local languages, or fostering digital literacy skills. The goal is to instill confidence and independence in the users, allowing them to engage with the product on their own terms.
Two trailblazers in this regard are the Kenyan mobile banking service, M-PESA, and the Nigerian bike-hailing service, SafeBoda. Both these organizations have recognized the power of community champions — individuals trusted and respected within the community — to deliver training sessions. These sessions revolve around key topics, including the use of mobile banking, understanding account security, safe rider practices, and strategies to reduce fraudulent activities.
M-PESA and SafeBoda have successfully sparked their respective revolutions — one in digital finance, the other in transportation — in Kenya and Nigeria. They achieved this by not just providing a service but also by investing in capacity building within their user base.
Through capacity building, we close the gap between the users and the solution, ensuring they can independently access and benefit from the products designed for them. This is a vital step towards self-reliance and a true testament to the power of empathetic design.
Measuring Real Impact
Success should be measured by the real-life impact of a design, not just traditional metrics like user engagement or downloads. LifeBank, a Nigerian health tech startup, is a great example of this.
Rather than simply tracking the number of deliveries, they choose to measure lives saved, hospitals served, and the health outcomes of patients who received their deliveries.
Empathetic design is about creating meaningful solutions that truly improve lives, not just about developing “sexy projects”. Everyone, regardless of their economic status, deserves well-designed products and services.
As designers, especially African designers, we have a unique opportunity to bridge this divide, creating a more inclusive, fair world through our work. Design is a powerful tool for social change. We must continue to ensure that we use it responsibly, effectively, and empathetically.
