Choosing empathy over judgement in UX
A question most asked while hiring a UX designer is “Give us an example of a situation where you displayed empathy’. This article is meant to discuss what exactly ’empathy’ is, its types and how can you develop this behavioral skill in your own personal and professional life.
What is empathy?
The word empathy is derived the ancient Greek word empatheia – which means ‘Physical affection’ or passion. Empathy in simple words means ‘being in someone else’s shoes. Though at times we may empathize with people around us we may not necessarily take actions to help. This is where different types of empathy come in. Let us looks at these types and I’ll share some examples from my work.
⇔ Affective empathy
As the name suggests, this happens when people feel what others are feeling, essentially where hearts and emotions are shared. This may not be limited to just physical pain but is most common around the mental state of a user.
I was leading a digital experience re-design with a Non-profit working for the support of immigrant Asian women in US. Having had similar accounts, I could feel a stronger emotional attachment to the project and in effect as I could put myself in the shoes of the target audience applying affective empathy o the ideation process.
¤ Cognitive empathy
This is the most common type of empathy that UX professionals need to exhibit. Cognitive empathy is understanding someone’s thoughts and feelings in a rational way rather than an emotional sense. It is based on thoughts and logic rather than feeling.
Earlier this year, I was spearheading a research project for an industry I had little knowledge about – agriculture and animal products. While trying to capture user’s journey through their financial and accounting processes, we tackled the findings with a more rational outlook. Though we were careful to capture details on user’s emotions/feelings but having never dealt with a similar process in our daily lives we adopted the roles of observers keeping our emotional radar completely out of range.
♥ Compassionate Empathy
As the words would suggest, this empathy one of the hardest to exhibit explores the human mind set of going beyond just feeling what someone else feels, but also to lend a helping hand in the process. Compassionate empathy or empathic concern not only includes empathizing, but also entails having a positive regard concern for the other person (Wikipedia).
During my time as a designer for a water conservation charitable organization, we looked beyond just understanding people’s situations, but during the process also supported 30K+ homes with access to safe drinking water while educating on way to effectively conserve water. So, it really required me to be open to taking on the emotions, thoughts, and experience of these users, with the intent of improving their experience effectively.
× Emotional self-regulation
Emotional regulation is a complex process that involves initiating, inhibiting, or modulating one’s state or behavior in a given situation. This is most common to highly volatile and emotionally charged professions such as medicine and law.
A good example of this may be an upcoming project that I have been working on, which is focused on brining healthcare information access to patients with chronic but not life-threatening diseases. By using an immersive technology like XR, we plan to open up the window of this exchange amongst healthcare providers and patients.
What can we do to improve our ability to empathize?
1. Start with listening – the more you open up to ‘listening’ and not just hearing, you will start to understand someone else’s situation better.
2. Do random acts of kindness – you do not need to join a charity to improve this skill, rather even doing little good deeds everyday can help you empathies – for example, open the door for someone, offer a seat in the bus to someone who needs it more than you, say thank you for the cars who stop to let you pass – the list can be endless.
3. Travel – open up your perspective to the rest of the world, there is so much unknown, so many stories untold – get out of our comfort zone and go find them.
4. Judge less, love more – Let go of your biases and stereotypes around people – their race, language, religion, sexual orientation – be curious, ask questions and build a more cohesive picture.
5. Let your heart be in charge – Gain more knowledge about the psychology of empathizing and when you are done weighing the data remember to put your heart in those decisions which affect people’s lives.
Final thoughts
Empathy is the gateway to creating a more meaningful, sustainable and respectful world for us. Whether you apply it in your professional life or personal, it can often lead to truly magical and memorable experiences. Start today and keep me posted on how you do!