Empathy is the ability to understand and identify with the context, emotions, goals, and motivations of others. In order to design great user experiences, successful design actively seeks empathy for its target users. Empathy is used in the design process to gather subjective information on the one hand and analyze it objectively on the other. The best way to gather subjective information is to be in the context of the target group and form insights into their experiences. Before designing products, it is important to understand how users are different. On an empathic level, designers can get a sense of what user goals are and how users feel when trying to achieve the goals when designers understand their target group on a subjective level. Beside exploring the feeling and experience of people, empathy also serves a unique purpose — to inspire design decisions early in the process. As Mattelmaki states in the article What Happened to Empathic Design, “ the purpose of empathic design research is not to find solutions to problems, but to find design opportunities and develop a holistic understanding of users.” Empathy in design thinking is not only a source of information and facts, but also inspiration and ideas.
Bibliography
Mattelmäki, Tuuli, et al. “What Happened to Empathic Design?” Design Issues, vol. 30, no. 1, The MIT Press, 2014, pp. 67–77, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24267026.
Kouprie, Merlijn, et al. “A Framework for Empathy in Design: Stepping in and out of the User’s Life”, Journal of Engineering Design, vol. 20, No. 5, October 2009, 437–448. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09544820902875033
Battarbee, Katja, et al. “Empathy on the edge: Scaling and Sustaining a Human-Centered Approach in the Evolving Practice of Design”, 2014, https://new-ideo-com.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/files/pdfs/news/Empathy_on_the_Edge.pdf
Leonard, Dorothy, and Jeffrey F. Rayport. “Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design.” Harvard Business Review, 1 Aug. 2014, hbr.org/1997/11/spark-innovation-through-empathic-design
Elmansy, Rafiq. “Empathic Design: The Most Difficult Simple Approach to Successful Design.” Designorate, 7 Apr. 2016, www.designorate.com/empathic-design-approach-to-successful-design/
