Empathy for big audiences

How do you develop empathy when designing for millions of people

It used to be ‘UX’ now it’s ‘empathy’. The newest word to fall victim to the need of our industry to attach trendy labels to things every quarter.

Developing empathy is more then understanding what your users like, want or would do; it’s about understanding the underlying motives and guiding principles of a person, independent of specific connections to any software or product you might be developing.

But what happens when you are designing for millions of people of different race, age, literacy, etc. How can you develop empathy for such a diverse group of people that you can’t necessarily narrow down?

A way to approach this problem is to start by identifying mindsets and contexts:

• What is going through someones head when they are trying to achieve X?
• What are people likely to be feeling when they want Y?
• In what context is someone going to be doing Z?

By listening to the experiences of multiple people, you can start to see an overlap of how they feel when faced with a similar context, even though they can represent completely different user groups.

You need to be curious about people and what drives them and be aware of the temptation to change core human behaviour with technology. This is an important quote to keep in mind:

Patterns do not change as a result of tools and technology — mostly, only the frequency and speed of achieving a purpose changes. Indi Young

You can’t step into the shoes of a million different people, but you can unveil the underlying reasons and pain points, that lead groups to do things a certain way. To achieve that, it’s important to listen and leave your pre conceived ideas behind. You need to empty your mind and become neutral, absorbing as much as possible of the world you are trying to understand. This is necessary to fade away your biased perception and will help you make decisions that are more aligned with reality.

Furthermore, big audiences come with a lot of data that can be used to identify the bigger areas of impact inside the business as well as who will be most affected by a change in the experience. Based on that, proposed solutions should go through a test and iterate process, being tweaked to address user needs and top complaints. Doing this will set you on your way to creating an empathetic product for the people you are trying to help.