Side Effects of Practicing Empathy Daily
A personal account on how practicing empathy as someone who works in UX design influences my day-to-day life and relationship.
A couple of months ago, I had a friend who called me to tell me about a problem that they’re having. Before they actually told me about the problem, they told me first, “You know, I just need to vent it out, and I’m not necessarily looking for a solution to the problem.”
That statement caught me off guard because that kind of disclaimer didn’t usually happen between me and my friend before. Normally, my friend would just begin immediately with what they want to talk about without giving any expectation what would they want out of it.
Moreover, I noticed that it’s not only one of my friends, but there are several who started giving that disclaimer. If they just reached out to me to vent, they would tell me first, “I just need to vent it out,” and if they actually want my advice, they would ask me, “What do you think I should do?” or start with “I need advice.”
So I asked my friends about why the sudden change of behavior, and they replied to me frankly that I just asked them too many questions. And not only that, my questions were too analytical, and they were just not ready or in the mood to feel analyzed by my questions.
Hearing that, I started reflecting on myself: “At what point did I become too analytical? Is it a bad thing? If so, how can I change it?”
Practicing empathy daily at work
After thinking about it for quite some time, my primary suspect of where it comes from is from my job in UX design as a UX writer, which I have been working as for almost 4 years. I remembered I shared this to one of my fellow co-workers, and they echoed a similar experience with their friend. Except in this case, the friend said to my co-worker: “You’re just asking me a lot of questions to fulfill your curiosity.”
So then, I’m not the only one. Then, what about working in UX that made me more analytical?
For me, I think a large part of it was practicing empathy daily in my work . As some of you might already know, empathy is a huge thing in UX. Being able to understand, and even share the feelings of others is quite crucial. Because essentially, whatever I am designing will be experienced by the users. So how do I do that, without understanding their problems, hopes, concerns, and feelings?
To put it quite simply, I have to put my egos completely aside when I’m in the process of designing, a concept that I’m quite familiar with before but never exercised to its fullest potential until I started working in UX.
You see, prior to working in UX design, I had zero UX experience. Previously, I was a writer for a men’s magazine. And while empathy played a large part there, it was not as big as when I came to UX.
To illustrate, when I was a writer in a men’s magazine, when I was interviewing and writing an article about a person, the subject and the contents are from them, but the way I formulate the story depends solely on me. So I may be writing about other people, but it’s through my perspective. And that’s okay, because that’s what makes the article more human and convincing.
On the contrary in UX, it’s all about the users, it’s about their wants and needs. Even if I have an assumption, it’s not a fact and I have to validate it. So my perspective is focused on figuring out what I think our users need.
To be able to do that is not a straightforward task. I have to be, or at the very least, act curious. When talking to our users for a development of a product or feature, I have to ask a lot of questions — including to myself — from various angles to make sure I don’t miss out on any important things. I have to ensure that I remain objective in my questions and not lead the users to the answer that I want, meaning instead of “How satisfied are you about A?”, I would ask “How do you feel about A?”
Bringing this to relationships
So naturally, this habit of acting curious, and the techniques that I learned alongside it, such as probing or being objective, has made its way to conversing with my friends as well. And I can imagine how it can get frustrating for a while, because in a way, it can be perceived that my attempt to be very objective is me not being supportive of them.
To illustrate, when I were to interview users at work, when users would ask, “By clicking this button, would I be able to be redirected to so-and-so?” I would not reply yes or no and instead would reply, “What do you think?” Not because I was challenging them, but because by answering yes or no, it would prevent me from really understanding what they are feeling at that moment.
To put it simply, it is not a mark of a good design if 10 out of 10 participants got the answer correctly but 10 out of 10 felt confused about it beforehand.
So imagine me doing this to my friends, abstaining from answering their questions and instead ask them back what they think. It can get quite irritating I would imagine. My friends used the word uncomfortable when describing it to me. Not to mention it also kind of forces my friends to think and reflect more on themselves, where sometimes, all they need is just, and I quote from a friend’s answer, “a sympathetic ear.”
On the flip side of empathy
And funnily enough, when I also think about what doing that to other people does to me, there‘s a downside to it. Because by really understanding what their concerns and hopes are, it also has somehow subconsciously made me become more attached to their concerns and hopes as well, as if it were mine in the first place. So I became dead set on helping my friend, and would feel as happy if they resolved it, and sad if it wasn’t.
There are also some instances in the past where after empathizing with my friends and really understanding their problem, I offer them advice, but then they do the exact opposite, and I feel disappointed.
At work, let’s say that I thoroughly interviewed several participants for a particular feature I’m working on. By practicing empathy, I understood their major concerns and hopes about the feature. When actually developing the feature, some of the participants’ concerns and hopes about the feature cannot be actualized due to one or two certain factors. And after knowing that, inadvertently, I started getting invested, “Oh, what about that one guy I interviewed, who has this so-and-so concern and hope about this feature. It wouldn’t be helpful for him if it turned out like this and I can’t do anything about it.” And to a certain extent, it made me feel distressed and even guilty because I can’t do anything to help him.
A remedy: Setting up boundaries
So with all of this, it got to the point where I realized that I have to start practicing boundaries when exercising empathy: To do it where it is actually required for me to do it, and if I do actually do it, don’t let it consume me as well.
If I feel that someone is still emotional or overwhelmed about a situation, I’ll just go as far as to sympathize with them, offer them moral support, and not automatically put my analytical hat on. If they don’t directly ask me for help, I’ll refrain myself from giving any unsolicited advice.
But if I am required to empathize with others, I’ll also take care that I won’t be troubled by it myself. What I do is that I remind myself that some things in life are just not in my control, like my friends’ decision on how to move forward with their problem, or the decisions made in the middle of a project.
Because when I actually think about it, in my examples above, why should I feel disappointed if my friend’s do the exact opposite of what I said? What’s in it for me to feel disappointed? Why should I feel distressed or guilty when the concerns of a participant cannot be addressed in the end? What’s important is that I’ve done my part in communicating this to my team and noted down the risks. What’s the worst that could happen as well?
So I guess, all in all, what I’m trying to share out of my experience is that while practicing empathy is a good thing, don’t automatically exercise it in every circumstance. In my experience, sometimes offering sympathy to others is good enough.
But if you do have to empathize with others, set a healthy boundary. Do empathize with others, but don’t forget to empathize with yourself too.
p.s. I also noticed that since I started working in UX design, I’m becoming more self-aware, more critical, and less judgmental. However, let this be a topic for another day.
