How Our Survival Relies On Our Ability To Design With Empathy
When I was growing up, my Grandparents had this sign hanging up in their house. It always stuck with me and made quite the impression. As a kid, I had heard the expression to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but this was something completely different.
To understand why it was so impactful, it helps to know a little background about the sign. Before I was born, my grandparents had taken in a girl into their house who was in need of a place to stay. She was a decedent from the Navajo Indian tribe. My grandparents treated her like family, in fact, her picture is hanging right next to all the siblings in their bedroom. While she was living there, she shared with my grandparents her culture and life. This is where the sign comes in.
The sign perfectly represents how two different cultures can come together and really understand each other. Because of that, this sign always stayed with me. Not only should I walk a mile in someone’s shoes, but I should experience a part of someone’s culture that was different than mine. It’s one of the earlier lessons in life I received about developing empathy.
What Is Empathy?
Brené Brown is an Empathy Expert. I know this video has been shared over and over, but I learn something new each time I watch it. This has been a great reminder of how I can use empathy to design a better solution for all.
I question my process and think “Am I designing with empathy or sympathy? What am I doing to create connections? Are my designs making those connections?”
If mansplaining exists then, certainly usersplaining exists. Userplaining alienates users by relying on personal assumptions and tells the user how they should behave. At its best, usersplaining expresses sympathy for its users, but at no time does the designer climb down into the pit with a user. In fact, usersplaining is so surrounded by personal bias that when someone acts differently, they are called edge cases.
“When you call something an edge case, you’re really just defining the limits of what you care about.” — Eric Meyer
Becoming An Ethical Designer
Designing with empathy is a huge part of becoming a more ethical designer. As designers, we are responsible for the work we put into the world. When we design experiences, we need to make sure that the decisions we make are ethical ones. The technology we are creating is becoming more integrated into people’s lives, and as designers, we need to be more conscious of who we are designing for so we can create a more inclusive design.
As we design user experiences, we need to set a standard of ethics. There is no better way to achieve this than by designing with empathy. Understanding and connecting with a variety of users ( and different kinds of users) helps designers stay grounded in ethical design. It challenges designer’s ideas and bring forward better ones. It allows designers to solve problems that actually exist.
Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints. To know whether you are properly solving those problems you need to meet the people who are having them…Throughout their entire career, a designer seeks to learn. That means confronting what they do not know. That means listening to other people’s experiences. That means welcoming and encouraging people who come from diverse backgrounds, diverse cultures. — Design Ethics by Mike Monteiro
Empathy starts with listening. When we listen to other people’s stories, we begin to understand where they are coming from. Talking and learning from more diverse perspectives widens our point of view, so when it comes to designing solution, we carry those stories with us.
Warning: Designing Without Empathy Is Dangerous
Unfortunately, I’ve experienced the negative and dangerous consequences when companies refuse to understand their audience base. We may have been able to make something look pretty, but we were unable to create something that truly connected with people.
When I was in that situation, I felt so frustrated that I did my own testing. What I found was the design, and the overall brand we had created wasn’t connecting with women. This was a massive problem because women were their biggest audience and lets no forget to mention over half the population on Earth. Women found the brand to be overly masculine and loud. Because the company didn’t talk to their audience and get to know them, they ended up with a design that excluded their primary audience.
Designing with empathy creates a more inclusive design. By talking to people and understanding where they come from opens up doors of discovery. It breaks down bias and assumptions. We’ll never start designing truly human-centered designs without it.
Empathy and Fires
In the summer of 2018, it was shocking to see the amount of deadly fires in California. It’s hard to see people lose so much in such a short amount of time, and having close friends and family so close to the fires, makes me worry even more.
When I was in High School, my cousins’ house caught on fire and destroyed most of everything they owned. They all made it out alive, and they always maintained a great perspective on life. I don’t even remember hearing them complain, but I remember my Aunt mentioning the hardest thing was losing all their pictures. All those memories of their family were now gone. It was the one thing she said that she was sad about losing.
During the fires in California, I was outraged to hear that Verizon throttled data speeds during the fires. This decision significantly impacted the fire department and hindered their response time. Responders were unable to track and route firefighting resources properly. The fire department would have to sign up for a new, more expensive plan before getting back their regular data speed.
This is a business decision that was removed entirely from empathy.
Chatbooks is a Utah based company that prints your pictures off social media into a scrapbook. Recently they announced the following:
As I think about my Aunt’s story, this really brings an impact. A decision like this is rooted in empathy.
These are the kind of decisions we need to be making with our designs. We need to make decisions that make a great impact on the world around us. It’s call human-centered design for a reason. We need to get down in the ditch with someone and really connect with them. Designing with empathy will not only create better products, but it will create a better society.
