The UX Toolbox Part 3: Empathy as a Tool, not a Weapon
Sounds strange right? Empathy as a weapon? Empathy is typically associated with understanding and feeling others emotions in order to truly understand them. Defined it’s “the ability to understand and share the feelings of others”. As UX designers your role it’s to deploy empathy in order to create products that the user can identify with on a deep, more intimate, potentially emotional level for the user. Visualize their emotions when using your product and where they are doing so.
Is the user opening the app on a lonely walk home to occupy time or potentially meet someone to change their life? These are considerations to make when deploying empathy in your design. But like any form of knowledge or information, this can be used for good or evil.
Empathy for the devil
It becomes quite easy in the real and messy world to deploy this information in a way that takes advantage of the users mindset, circumstance, or need. Though you may understand that the user is attempting to checkout for something you may also make it more difficult for them to remove an extra item that is automatically added into their cart.
Perhaps you’ve made it an endless loop for the user to reach their exit path as you know they are emotionally invested in the outcome of their task. Either scenario, you are deploying empathy as a weapon to take advantage of the user and their situation.
Call it dark “UX” or dark “patterns” it’s makes no difference, you are simply forcing the user into your web knowing full well they will delve deeper into it.
Deploy responsibly
Knowing what we know about our users is intimate stuff. After all, most user interviews lead you down a path of the users mind not often taken by most. It lends insights to fears, habits, goals, and needs. To manipulate this information is not bad UX but just irresponsible.
Moreover, and really the biggest point to takeaway from all of this, is that your users are humans. They have the ability to create, inspire, and motivate. They also have the ability to destroy, control, and manipulate. As a UX designer you have a choice as to which you want your users to embody.
I recognize the gravity of the previous statements, but this is the reality. Now more than ever humans all around the world are using their own phones to direct their behaviors and goals. We spend more time connected to a screen than we do with our partners and family. The fact is that any design that is placed in the hands of users has the capability to shape their world.
Know this and understand it well, and then use your empathy superpowers to shape the world for good.
With great empathy comes great responsibility… that’s what the movie said right?
