How to be successful during Covid? Empathy.

Due to Covid, and it’s ramifications on our industry, we have seen many approaches on how to tackle digital and advertising with sensitivity, and yet still have a memorable and successful impact for the businesses we represent.

This task for many of us might feel Sisyphean in nature, though the boulder is replaced by Zoom calls, yet there is perhaps a solution readily available to us.

A recent study has shown that the key to success in these times comes from a seemingly simple action, the action of being empathetic. A recent study by Digiday offers great insight into the positive impact that empathy can play in increased engagement.

Their study highlights seven key strategies, and each is underpinned by a common theme, that to be empathetic is the best means to resonate with consumers in uncertain times.

In fact their study showed that of all the seven strategies the one that had the greatest impact, in terms of click through and completion, was the introduction of empathetic headlines.

For the two metrics that were measured, click through and completion, those with empathetic headlines increased by 156% and 149% respectively. It was also not a surprise to see that one of those that used this the most effectively was Microsoft — via their teams platform.

“Empathy, to reason with the heart. Empathy, to sense the total situation”

Kat Holmes, (translation from mandarin) Mismatch, MIT Press

Microsoft is a company who have rooted themselves in the principles of Inclusive Design and as Kat Holmes (ex Microsoft employee and currently at Salesforce) showed in her seminal book on inclusive design, Mismatch: how inclusion shapes design, empathy is a vital part of the methodology, and an imperative tool for designers from all disciplines to practice so they can assess the totality of the situation.

This thinking of empathy led solutions, in particular when applied to inclusive design, is one of the foundational principles behind our work at Kin+Carta Connect.

By designing with empathy we understand that lived experience always trumps learned in areas of exclusion, and that it is our job to understand the lives of those who face this exclusion rather than dictate to them what any “solution” should be without that empathy or experience.

In designing with empathy we not only bring our technical, design and user insight to play, we also watch, listen and learn from the natural workarounds of those that face daily exclusionary problems, and use this to apply their own discovered solutions to problems to create new innovations.

You do not need to be an expert to be an advocate.

Moreover it’s vital to remember that advocacy of those that face exclusion comes from empathy with their situations. If you can place yourself in the life of someone to whom multiple digital doors are shut, due to use of a screenreader, Dragon or a.n other assistive technology, then you can begin to understand how to solve those points of exclusion.

Solutions do not come via assumptions of what’s best to do without the lived experience to validate it, nor via checkbox lists at the end of a project lifecycle, but by using their insight into the best way to make experiences work for them.

“People, not tech, create ableist assumptions. Tech will perpetuate all the assumptions of its designers”.

Haben Girma, disability rights lawyer, speaker, & author

There is often a common misconception that designing inclusionary systems leads to a “jack of all trades” solution, something bland and lacking in visual excitement, yet the truth is that truly empathetic and inclusive design looks not to remove creativity, instead it’s purpose is to add new user journeys that solve exclusion, and to design equally creative and engaging solutions for all. Multiple entry points, with multiple creative solutions.

Through user research, ethnographic studies, deep understandings of user behaviour and technology, and above all else empathy, we can create a more inclusive world that expands not just the who of our digital estate, but also the how.

Innovation driven by empathy and inclusion isn’t just the future anymore, it’s the right now, and it underpins all of our thinking and practice at Kin+Carta Connect.

Kevin Mar-Molinero, Director of Experience Technologies, Kin+Carta Connect