What is empathy and why does it matter?
Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes in their place.
To see things from the others perspective. It's to put biases and assumptions aside and try to truly understand the realities and problems of the situation, what others want, need and feel.
When it comes to product design, empathizing with the users means focusing on qualitative data instead of quantitative. Designers get qualitative data by observing the users.
Observe, question, engage.
When designers engage with the users, they can get information on how the users think, behave, feel, and what their values are. Most of the time, these kinds of things are not clear even for the users.
Questions like ** "how"** and ** "why"** are crucial to understanding users' behavior. Communication is vital to understand and empathise with users.
By doing this, designers can also uncover needs that haven't been previously met, or even identified, and this can lead to new solutions that have never been thought up.
Empathy is the way to a more inclusive design
It's relatively easy to design for people who are in some way or capacity caught up with technology and interfaces. Those users are already fluent in the language that they need to speak to use a product.
Designing for someone that barely speaks or doesn't understand this language at all is an entirely different story. Even when designers don't have direct access to the target users, they get an idea of who they are, but they should **not make assumptions on the skill level that the users have.
Designers are usually not the average user of the product they are creating. That's why it is so important to create empathy with the user. Experiences and assumptions should be put aside and a beginner's mindset must be assumed. It's based on those experiences and assumptions that an understanding of the world is created. It impacts the capacity to empathize with users that are being observed.
Don't judge, don't assume, ask questions.
Empathize with low resources
There are times where engaging with users is not possible. Sometimes because it is a small project with budget constraints, amongst other possible reasons.
Nonetheless, it is crucial for designers in this situation to still empathize with the target users, even if they don't have access to the means necessary to observe users and conduct interviews.
Some things that anyone can do:
- imagine what it's like to be in the user's environment and assume a beginner's mind.
- do some research about the target user.
- find reviews of similar products.
Of course, this is not ideal. However, if observing and interviewing users isn't an option, doing this is better than doing nothing to understand your target.