Empathy for Designers
Empathy. It is often regarded as the holy grail of design. Design Thinking promised we can solve any problem if we empathize hard enough. But what happens when we are designing for complex social problems? Can empathy even be harmful for ourselves and our design process?
The complex problems of today and tomorrow, cannot be solved with the tools of yesterday.
Let's have empathy for you, dear designer
The Social Design field is growing rapidly. More and more designers and researchers are wanting to get involved in “real world’ problems, like fighting poverty, suicide and crime, to name a few. UX research can be of great value when it comes to complex (social) challenges. When a user's needs, wishes, fears and experiences come with strong emotions there is a lot to gain, but also a lot to lose.
We looked at the Empathic Design Process (Sleeswijk 2009) and the Eindhoven Empathy Model (Pagán, 2020) and have found a few pitfalls in the models based on our own experiences practical experiences in the field of Social Design. In the e-book "Empathy for Designers" we explain the pitfalls and propose tools for designers, researchers and teams to be better equipped, to guard themselves and their research process.
Proximity Mapping
A tool to map everyones proximity to the research topic. This tool will help you discuss this with your team (or decide for yourself) by addressing the relevant signals and factors to take into account.
Apathy Trap
You can fall in the Apathy Trap when you no longer can detach in
order to take insights into action. You become overwhelmed or maybe even cynical.