UX designers, change the channel for your regular episode of empathy.
Next time you feel like a Game of Thrones binge, change the channel and watch Teen Mom or Pawn Stars. It might just help you become a better UX designer.
Last year, the US election result shocked many when Donald Trump was elected President. There’s been much commentary around how the media got it so wrong, and a swathe of ‘fake news’.
Should it come as a shock that so many people could be blindsighted by this when we’re consuming modern media in a way that increasingly reflects our own views and ‘Likes’?
A recent analysis of voting habits in the US Election by the New York Times showed the cultural divide tieing TV shows to voting habits. Largely representing an urban vs regional divide, the analysis found the correlation between fans of Duck Dynasty (a typical Louisiana family that is big on duck hunting) and those that voted for Trump was higher than any other show.
This isn’t limited to the United States or strictly to TV shows and voting habits. Over the ditch in Australia we have whole cities like Sydney and Melbourne in their own bubble of optimism (more here).
Is personalisation making us blind?
Experiences we use on a daily basis such as Facebook, help us inforce tendencies we already have: “one of the things we want is to spend more time with people who think like us and less with people who are different,” said author and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt.
More and more content we consume is hyper-personalised. From your News Feed on Facebook, to Netflix. You choose the topics and publications you want to follow and then they start choosing you. Content is advertised to you based on what you click on and are most interested in or how you might be like someone else. “Most of our algorithms are based on the assumption that similar viewing patterns represent similar user tastes. We can use the behavior of similar users to infer your preferences”, Engineering Director of Netflix, Xavier Amatriain told Wired.
“One downside of this system, however, is that it can have the effect of creating a classic “echo chamber” — showing you only those posts which reflect your own attitudes and opinions” — Michael Rundle, Wired
Reality check
While we can blame technology for narrowing our world view, perhaps it’s just a more tangible example of what we naturally do in ordinary life. “the fact that the algorithm’s narrowing effect is nearly as strong as our own avoidance of views we disagree with suggests that it’s actually a pretty big deal” said Eli Pariser.
Are UX designers immune from these behavioural trends? Likely not; we all have our own inherit biases and different world views. We naturally want to consume things that we like and switch off things that don’t interest us. But for UX designers and researchers, does this make it harder for us to relate to people that are different?
“Game of Thrones [is] much more popular in cities than it is in the countryside, probably the only show involving zombies that is,” Josh Katz, New York Times.
Usability author Whitney Quesenbery defines empathy as “the ability to understand and identify with another person’s context, emotions, goals, and motivations.” But can we really say we’re identifying with another person’s context if the technology we create helps views become more insular by skipping mainstream broadcasts of what’s going on in the world for the comfort of our personalised media streams?
The quest for empathy
Due to the concentration of technology industry and therefore UX jobs in urban capital cities around the world, perhaps as an industry we are at risk of restricting our empathetic world view to a short radius from our own.
As our experiences become more personalised, has it become harder to really understand what it’s like to be different to you?
In the 1980s, pioneer Patricia Moore undertook an experiment in radical empathy, going undercover at the age of just 26 as an elderly disabled woman. Her experience, while incredible (and worth reading more about in her book Disguised: A True Story), is an extreme example of what the quest for empathy can involve to truly understand what other people go through in their own context.
So, what can you do? For starters, ask yourself what you’re doing as a UX designer to step out of your bubble and really understand people outside of your day to day experiences. Can you run your next research or testing study in a regional area? A different city? Maybe even in a different country?
Or perhaps it’s something simple; next time you grab the remote, change the channel. Read a different news source. Stay in touch with a friend or family member that drives you nuts. Travel more. Watch a TV show you can’t stand. Get uncomfortable.
Who knows, you might just find something you weren’t expecting.
Do you have any stories about how you’re being more empathetic in your day to day life? I’d love to hear them.
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Chris is a Product Design Leader, question-asker and problem solver with a passion for design, media and technology.
