Empathic Design: Human-Centered Design & Design Thinking

Not long ago I was invited to the first Aging 2.0 event in Berlin, to speak about design thinking and our experiences in gaining empathy for older people at the HPI School of Design Thinking.

Here’s an edited version of what I said – essentially 2 easy lessons to keep in mind when designing solutions for older people. You can also check this beautiful visualisation of my talk by Giovanni Ruello.

An IDEO researcher practicing "creative listening."What would an Argentinian car mechanic know about childbirth? If you’re Jorge Odon, father of five, quite a bit. Or at least enough to design a low...

 

By practicing “creative listening,” he was able to step out of his expertise and identify value in an idea that came from a complete outsider, with the intention of building on it and making it better.

This same skill is key to good improv theater: actors listen to the words of the previous actor and, despite never having heard them before, build on them to continue the narrative. Improvisers call it the “Yes, and” rule. ...

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By practicing “creative listening,” he was able to
step out of his expertise and identify value
in an idea that came from
a complete outsider,

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Tim Brown CEO at IDEO

Via Edwin Rutsch

For many in the innovation field, the hardest task is listening – real listening, deep listening. To listen without building a mental model or rushing to a conclusion is a cultivated skill.

 

To listen to a person’s summary of your product or service and honor their experience as the only experience that matters is not only a great courtesy, but it can be a competitive advantage; that is, if you are willing to collect feedback from a lot of customers and apply adaptive intelligence.

 

The hardest part is just listening.

 

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In the Design Thinking methodology of

innovation, the first major phase is

Empathy.

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Via Edwin Rutsch

Social is design, as we have seen,  is all about people: with and for people. In order to come closer to understanding the complexity of problems, feelings, habit, needs and opportunities, designer...

 

Empathic design, co-design, participatory design are some of the terms used to indicate a work done with people involving them directly in the design process. These methods allow the creation of empathy between designer and user and the discovery of design opportunities. Many of them are taken from Ethnography and some were (and are ) practiced in Architecture.

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Empathic design, co-design, participatory

design  are some of the terms used to indicate

a work done with people involving them

directly in the design process. 

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Empathy in Design

In realm of design, design-thinking is rooted in empathy, where you try to see from the perspective of a user of a given design or product.  There is a lot more to design thinking than that, but in a nutshell it is about human centered design where empathy is king.

Empathy in Human Services

In the social services field I’ve been striving to lead new thinking in, there is also a focus on empathy when designing quality support services.  For example, in the old days of social services, an institution or bunch of “experts” would often end up designing irrelevant services because the service model was not based on what the client needed and wanted but on what the system needed. In other words, there was a lack of empathy for the individual needs and wishes of the client.

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Nowadays, the best social service designers,

are much like design thinkers; empathizing, 

inquiring more, testing ideas and always 

wondering if a proposed service

is truly relevant to the person

that uses the service.

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By Ben Weinlick

The powerhouse brother team, David Kelley and Tom Kelley, is coming out with a new book this month. Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within us All...

 

The notion of empathy and human-centeredness is still not widely practiced in many corporations. Business people rarely navigate their own websites or watch how people use their products in a real-world setting. And if you do a word association with “business person,” the word “empathy” doesn’t come up much.

 

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What do we mean by empathy in terms of

creativity and innovation? 

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What do we mean by empathy in terms of creativity and innovation? For us, it’s the ability to see an experience through another person’s eyes, to recognize why people do what they do. It’s when you go into the field and watch people interact with products and services in real time—what we sometimes refer to as “design research.” Gaining empathy can take some time and resourcefulness.

Via Edwin Rutsch

A manager plans team-building activities to increase a team's effectiveness. If team members develop better listening skills, such as empathy, they can become more attuned to group needs.

They can communicate more often in response to this emotional information. Showing concern for a speaker's needs makes the speaker feel that he is being heard.

 

Play a Listening Game

Team-building activities promote good listening. A manager can vary Dr. Carl Rogers' listening game by assigning employees to choose a partner and try this activity. The first partner speaks honestly for 30 seconds while the other partner listens.

The second partner must restate what his partner said. This process continues until the second partner can restate the first speaker's main point and the first speaker is satisfied. Then the partners switch roles and play the game again.

 

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Play a Listening Game 

Team-building activities promote good listening.

A manager can vary Dr. Carl Rogers' listening game

by assigning employees to choose

a partner and try this activity. 

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Teach Empathy's Relationship to Customer Service ...
 

Use Role-Playing Activities...
 

Teach Empathy as a Team Asset...

 

by Audra Bianca, Demand Media..

Via Edwin Rutsch

Create. Inform. Engage.

Journalism training, media news & how to's

1. Empathize
 

“Journalists naturally need to be empathetic,” Leticia Britos Cavagnaro told Poynter via Skype. Britos Cavagnaro, adjunct faculty at Stanford School of Engineering’s Technology Ventures Program and associate director of National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), co-teaches the d.school’s creativity and innovation class with Tina Seelig.

Most people come to a “story with an idea, a perspective or a hypothesis,” she said; being empathetic means having the “ability to talk to someone and really let go of those preconceptions.”

 

The goal of empathy is to gain insight or “put myself in the shoes of the other person or the many different stakeholders,” Britos Cavagnaro said. 

Use empathy by asking open-ended questions and actively listening to uncover people’s needs and motivations.

Asking “Why?” often is effective.

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The goal of empathy is to gain insight or

“put myself in the shoes of the

other person or the many

different stakeholders,”

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by Anna Li

Via Edwin Rutsch

The ability to see the world through the eyes of others can help companies develop new products

 

Empathy is the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s far more than just being a nice person. If properly developed, empathy can give you and your company a distinct competitive edge. Negotiating a contract, dealing with workplace conflicts, coming up with a marketing campaign, or dreaming up the next must-have consumer gadget all require the ability to see the world through eyes that aren’t your own.

 

Sadly, managers and human resource departments too often neglect the interpersonal skills that are so essential to achieving results.

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If properly developed, empathy can

give you and your company a

distinct competitive edge.

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TODD HIRSCH

Via Edwin Rutsch

How do you use your toilet paper? Are you a folder? A wrapper? A scruncher? We're betting it's the later.

But what does it say about you as an individual, and why does it matter anyway?

Deana McDonagh discusses why you can't

design anything for someone if you don't

understand them first, and how creating

empathetic products changes....  

Via Edwin Rutsch

Perhaps you can’t teach it but you maybe can inspire it. Empathy requires putting oneself in a position to understand another person’s experiences and ultimately their needs, and in any classroom that is no simple lesson to learn—but it is exactly what Interior Architecture Professor Sarah Sherman is attempting to do in her Graduate 5 Healthcare Studio.

“In order to design a healthcare facility a student must deeply understand the users of the space,” Professor Sherman explains.  She emphasizes that the design of healthcare facilities provides a unique opportunity to affect people at a critical point in their life.

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In this post, the author reveals how

empathy is the key foundation

of Design Thinking.

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This summer I completed my first “MOOC” (Massive Open Online Course) through Stanford University's “Design Thinking Action Lab." The course description caught my interest: “Stanford d.school lecturer and Epicenter Associate Director Leticia Britos Cavagnaro and her team will take you on a journey to learn the Design Thinking process.

This methodology for human-centered creative problem solving is used by companies and organizations to drive a culture of innovation. The Design Thinking Action Lab will provide the inspiration, tools and support you need to discover the joy of learning by doing as you tackle an innovation challenge in the real world.” My sincere gratitude goes to Dr. Cavagnaro for an excellent and dynamic MOOC experience!

By Lesa Walker

Via Edwin Rutsch

Empathy, not technology, is the mother of innovation: that was the surprising lesson learnt by a group of MBA students and entrepreneurs at a workshop led by IDEO and Google Labs at Silicon Valley 

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“Having been through the empathy exercise

we had a very different view of what was

really important to our customer compared

with what I probably would have

imagined before.” 

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Via Edwin Rutsch

Tom and David Kelley of the award-winning Palo Alto-based global design firm IDEO have been helping private and public sector organizations innovate, grow and bring to market new ideas for 35 years...

 

The notion of empathy and human-centeredness
is still not widely practiced
in many corporations.

Business people rarely navigate their own websites or watch how people use their products in a real-world setting.

And if you do a word association with
“business person,” the word “empathy”
doesn't come up much.

 

What do we mean by empathy in terms of creativity and innovation? For us, it’s the ability to see an experience through another person’s eyes, to recognize why people do what they do. It’s when you go into the field and watch people interact with products and services in real time—what we sometimes refer to as “design research.” Gaining empathy can take some time and resourcefulness. But there is nothing like observing the person you’re creating something for to spark new insights.

And when you specifically set out to empathize
with your end user, you get your own ego
out of the way.

We’ve found that figuring out what other people actually need is what leads to the most significant innovations. In other words, empathy is a gateway to better and sometimes surprising insights that can help distinguish your idea or approach.

 

By Tom Kelley and David Kelley

Via Edwin Rutsch

The ability to empathise is recognised as a crucial soft skill that web designers, writers and managers require. However, empathy needs more than an intellectual understanding.

If you spend anytime at all reading the plethora of articles on designing or running websites, it won’t take you long to encounter the word empathy.

The user centric movement obsesses (rightfully so) about understanding users. We create personas, customer journeys and empathy maps. We run focus groups, user test sessions and emotional response tests.

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And yet with all of our techniques and tools,'

I am not convinced we really ever

actually' empathise.

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by Paul Boag

Via Edwin Rutsch

But surely SOCIAL entrepreneurs are empathetic?

While social entrepreneurs like Ashoka’s Bill Drayton or Oxford Business School’s Pamela Hartigan are quite right that you cannot be truly profitable if you are not wired for empathy, this does not mean that it’s not hard.  It’s not just technology and social media that’s to blame. Based on my own experience, there is something that happens from that “road to Damascus moment” (essential to the foundational tales of many social entrepreneurs from Jacqueline Novogratz’s moment of finding a boy in Africa wearing her old blue sweater to John Woods discovering the need for libraries in the Himalayas) in which a stubborn, passionate person is confronted with the immediate and direct experience of an obstacle that they are determined to remove, come hell or high water. 

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you cannot be truly profitable if

you are not wired for empathy, 

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But now as people strive to create the most social change and demonstrate the data of their impact, does something still get lost? One of our queen word smiths, Monika Smyczek, asked over a late-night “Launchathon” (our own version of hackathons where we dissected and championed one another’s businesses) the key question that anyone must ask as they try to retain empathy in the DNA of an organization: “How do you scale Gandhi?”

Via Edwin Rutsch

We, the design community, talk (and write and speak) a lot about empathy.  We lament the empathy deficit in our companies and clients and cry "something must be done about this."

We tout personas, empathy maps, experience maps, and other methods as empathy deficit reducers that lead to better experiences (and profits). Some, at the extremes, position human-centered designers as Platonic figures releasing stakeholders from the shadows of opinion and faceless analytics into the reality of human emotions, needs, and desires. 

 

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We tout personas, empathy maps,
experience maps, and other methods

as empathy deficit reducers that lead

to better experiences (and profits).

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We talk a lot about other people's empathy. But what about your own? What about mine? 

How empathetic am I?

by patrick quattlebaum 

Via Edwin Rutsch

This is the second post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series,Teach Less, Integrate More here.

Great designers are great empathizers. It's what separates a design that has soul from one that's simply well-realized. In my experience as a design director and as a teacher, it's become painfully clear that the ability to connect with users is something design students must learn, as crucially as they need sketching and CAD.

Unfortunately, the most common student design project has students designing with themselves as the target user. Research becomes a box to be ticked, and certainly never integrated into the design process.

The real world, though, is full of unfamiliar design targets, and schools have a responsibility to teach the difficult skill of taking on their perspectives.

What students need to learn is not just empathy, but extreme empathy—the flexibility to inhabit the mind of someone dramatically unlike themselves. 

 

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Great designers are great empathizers

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core jr