- Design, Design Theory, Emotion, Empathy, Psychology and Human Behavior
Empathy Building Ain’t Easy If You Do It Right
Article by Ovetta Sampson
Stop Bastardizing Design with False Empathy
- For empathy to be a successful part of design, it can’t just be an external reflection, it must be an internal activity that leads to transformative action.
- Ovetta Sampson, principal design director at Microsoft, suggests considering 3 levels of empathy:
- Cognitive/intellectual empathy – talking to people, writing down what they said and sharing photos and quotes to communicate what they heard.
- Emotional empathy – when you feel what people feel, as though their emotions were contagious.
- Compassion empathy or empathetic concern – something we should thrive for when building empathy.
- In order to build empathy in design, you need to decouple your experiences and your mental models associated with those experiences, from the product user.
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- February 3, 2022
16 min read