If you have ever researched the world of UX Design you have probably heard the term “Empathetic Design” as a key to the design process. In this note we are going to try to explain what it is about and why it is so important.
When creating or improving a product, it is very easy (and dangerous) to get stuck with only a small part of the design process: the visual, the aesthetic, the superficial. But no matter how aesthetic the product is, does it fulfill the function for which it was created? Do users really understand how to use it? Is the experience that users go through what you had planned? To answer these questions we have to go back to rule number 1 of UX design: YOU ARE NOT THE USER.
No matter how much you know the industry, or how many years of experience you have as a designer, no one knows your product better than the users who use it every day. This does not mean that they have the exact answers to all the problems, nor that they can give you exact instructions on how to design your product, but it is in them where the greatest insights are hidden.
Designing with empathy is taking an extra step to understand the motivations, habits and emotions that users have when they need to navigate a situation in which your product or service will be part of the equation. Doing individual or group interviews, usability testing, heat maps or A/B testing are the first tools that come to mind, but is simply doing these enough to really understand users? The answer: no. Don’t be misunderstood, these tools are essential in any UX research and they will (and should) continue to be used in any design process, since they return information that will be very useful when making decisions, but without the correct approach. they may return merely superficial results.
To achieve a design with empathy, we must add the seasoning of observation to our practices. In this way we can begin to discover how our audience uses our products in everyday life situations. Many times users are not aware of what the interaction with the products is like to propose new solutions to the problem, but if we observe these interactions in organic conditions of use we can empathize with them and see the situation in a much more complete way. Where does the user use the product? What things do you do before and after using our product? Do you use it alone or does someone else participate? Do they combine your product with another to achieve the final goal? These are some of the questions that would be lost if we only stick to laboratory tests.
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
Let’s take an example. When the first versions of mobility service applications were created (such as Uber, Lyft, Cabify) one of the main problems to be overcome was the mistrust that passengers felt about getting into a stranger’s car. For this, functionalities were used to validate the security of the service: ratings from other users, verification of the driver’s account, predetermined travel routes, among others. In theory, anyone could claim that these are tools that increase the reliability of the service and its driver, but reality showed that this was not enough. Observing the customs that passengers, and especially women, adopted, it was very common for them, as a precaution, to keep a relative, friend or partner updated on how their journey was going. This includes WhatsApp messages, phone calls and even sharing your live location from Google Maps.
In this case, it was observed that a safe travel experience was completed only when the application was used in conjunction with one or even two other applications. One approach to a solution was to incorporate a native functionality to share live trip information with whoever you want, in which, officially and validated by the company, what is happening during the journey is transparent and can even be viewed. the route on a map. The first applications to incorporate this functionality not only managed to increase the reliability of their service with their current users, but they were also able to narrow the gap for those who still did not dare to use the application.
Taking the time to design with empathy and putting yourself in the user’s shoes will not only allow us to create products closer to their objective, but will also connect with more people than you initially imagined.