Designing with Heart : How empathy is transforming the Design Thinking Process

According to Frank Chimero, artist and author of The Shape of Design:

“People Ignore Design That Ignores People.”

That makes empathy a critical component of any successful company strategy.

Understanding how a user reacts to a product or interface is crucial; does this website’s design cause irritation? When using this app, how does the customer feel?

Using the jobs-to-be-done empathy paradigm, designers can create products that appeal to the target audience and streamline their daily routines. Empathy is the safety valve that keeps the design process from floundering without it.

What Exactly Is Empathy, And Why Is It So Vitally Important?

To empathize is to “understand, be aware of, be sensitive to, and experience vicariously the emotions, thoughts, and experience of another, without having the feelings, ideas, and experience completely transmitted in an objectively clear way,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When we feel compassion for another person, it motivates us to take action in a social setting. When we feel empathy for another person’s plight, we are moved to take action to alleviate their pain.

To make the proper decisions, designers must develop empathy for their customers.

• Does this website’s layout make you feel frustrated as a user?
• How may a user respond to a product or interface?
• Which feelings does the user experience when making use of this app?

By putting themselves in their customers’ shoes, designers better understand their needs and craft items that will delight and simplify their lives. Without this understanding of the user’s perspective, the design process will lack the user-centricity crucial to a product’s success.

Remember That Sympathy Is Not Empathy

A common pitfall in design thinking is mistaking empathy for sympathy. It’s unnecessary to share another person’s experiences to be empathetic toward them. You can recognize the difference now that you have a basic grasp of what empathy entails.

What’s more, when we sympathize with someone, we frequently project our own emotions of pity and grief onto them in the act of superiority. These sentiments might upset others and be counterproductive while trying to create something new. Understanding the people you’re designing for is more important than having a gut reaction to their present situation.

In order to develop a solution that addresses an issue faced by your target audience, you must first put yourself in their shoes by visiting them in their natural environments, observing their behavior, and conducting interviews. To do this, you don’t need sympathy but rather empathy.

How Does Empathy Tie Into The Process Of Design Thinking?

Empathy is essential in the early phases of design thinking; the foundations of every design should be founded on empathy. At this step, the designer must:

• Get acquainted with the customer/user.
• Spend significant time with the user to get to know them and observe their feelings.
• Get acquainted with the user to the point where the latter can sense the former on a psychological and emotional level.

Most of us are rather arrogant because we view other people and their emotions through our own eyes. Creating a distorted representation of others based on our own preconceived assumptions. It is critical to break this behavior since it may impair our capacity to empathize. This is particularly important for designers, who must put aside their personal perspectives before trying to grasp the psychology of the user. Making good observations and connecting with them on a personal level contributes significantly to developing successful knowledge.

The 4 Phases of Research in Empathy

Discovery – Identifying and contacting the users is the first step in the discovery process. The phase’s goal is to recognize user behavior and excavate the unspoken factors that influence their actions and decisions.

Immersion — Stepping figuratively into the user’s shoes is an absorption into the empathy phase. In order to comprehend the people for whom you are addressing the issue, it is necessary to repeat the users’ experiences, engage in the same activities, and immerse oneself in their world.

Connection — In this stage, the goal is to connect with the user’s life via observation, involvement, and experience to better understand their wants, issues, and obstacles. Here, you may connect with the users and develop empathic insights.

Detachment — Detach and practice what you learned through empathizing to define and come up with ideas with a better grasp of the user’s life.

It’s always possible to learn something new about users. Following the four stages above may help you do thorough, well-planned research that can provide insightful user information that can be used to help you:

• define,
• ideate,
• prototype, and
• test your design as you go through the Design Thinking process.

Putting Empathy to Use

Various methods and processes are required to really understand the individuals we are designing for. I will discuss some of its features and advantages below.

Gain Empathy from Talking to Actual Users

User interviews are the most influential research tool for tapping into empathy. This is based on the well-established principle that “You are not your user.”

You may roughly classify user interviews into three distinct types:

1. Questionnaires and other types of structured interviews;
2. Semi-structured, to provide some direction in testing theories;
3. Informal in-depth interviews. Users are mostly left to their devices, with little or no supervision or interruption. The situation in which no prior design work has been completed;

At this step of the Design Thinking process, Empathize, we need to conduct in-depth, unstructured interviews. Avoiding leading users might help them avoid having their views skewed. To listen attentively and make notes is our mission.

Ways of Expressing Understanding via Visualization

Both our users and our colleagues need our empathic attention. Accordingly, in keeping with the principles of empathetic design, we should also show the data in a way that considers the audience’s perspective. Both “design thinking” and “design” may benefit from this.

a. Empathy Maps

Empathy maps guarantee a more profound comprehension of our consumers’ requirements and are essential for creating effective design choices.

Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels are the usual categories used in empathy maps. However, these divisions are not required. Because of its layout, you may investigate the user’s persona in a way that isn’t strictly sequential.

b. Journey Mapping

I can empathize with my users at every point of interaction thanks to journey maps. They provide me insight into the words and thoughts that consumers may have when they engage with different parts of my product. I can now foresee their actions and adapt my designs appropriately.

Remember that you may easily adjust customer journey maps to suit your needs. Understanding the user’s perspective requires attention to the user’s words, thoughts, actions, and emotions.

c. Storyboards

Similarly, storyboarding is an expansion of empathy maps. A user’s experience with your product may be improved and anticipated with their help. In most cases, they are comic-like pictures showing the many steps a user must go through to complete a task on a website or application.

This user analysis is significantly more efficient and user-friendly than reading a 40-page study on the same subject. I witness users in realistic settings to add to the humanization and the potential for empathy.

The Bottom Line

Empathy is an important skill for designers since it helps them understand how their audience acts and feels. To correctly answer your customers’ demands, you must thoroughly comprehend their challenges. It helps solve complex, ill-defined, or unknown challenges by re-framing them in human-centric ways.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of the importance of empathetic design and its impact on app user experience.