Don’t skip step 1 of your design process: A Sequel

I wrote an article about empathy in design a few months back, it seems like it’s still pretty relevant so here we go again:

One of the very first things we learn about user experience design is the importance of empathy and understanding the people you’re designing a product for. If these two had simply taken the time to reflect on why naming their Silicon Valley, grocery store vending machine “Bodega” might hit some nerves and maybe chosen to simply call it “simple shop” or whatever, they might not have faced all this backlash. Designers have this mindset that creativity and innovation are sacred, that nothing you make for the supposed good of other people or for the sake of convenience can be offensive or harmful, because you start off with good intentions and it seems like a good solution. A lot of the time, I don’t think designers should be making products for the Everyman, it’s such an insular bubble that often times only houses people who’ve grown up privileged and is undeniably mostly upper class (and male and white). These two didn’t bother to think about what the bodega means to your every day, lower middle class and poor person living in NYC or LA or anywhere bodegas exist. It’s about understanding the emotional impact of that social space and why it’s important and why a grocery store vending machine is very different. They basically skipped step 1 of UX design and assumed because they though the idea was good and useful it should be made exactly as they envisioned it, full stop. The whole point of this long ass paragraph is to point out that this is a lesson for everyone designing products and experiences: your experience is not everyone else’s experience, your idea of good or useful is not everyone’s idea of good or useful. If you’re a designer you need to be empathetic, you need to understand who you are designing for and why. I could go into how culturally emotion and empathy are seen as weak or soft skills and how in tech and science there seems like no place for it, but this would go on forever, the real core of this is that being able to feel and understand- really understand someone else’s experience is an incredibly important and valuable skill.

DESIGN IS ABOUT EMPATHY.