Empathetic Design and Equality
9.8.2021
Empathy - “The ability to be aware of, understanding of, and sensitive to another person’s feelings and thoughts without having had the same experience.”
Our generation has begun to look at the world through a more inclusive lens. We have realized how crucial it is to account for everyone for the world to run smoothly. IDEO’s essay about design empathy outlines how all design issues should be approached. When approaching a design problem, one of the first things we as designers may do is shift our perspective. We look at the problem through the clients' and the consumers' eyes to envision the most effective outcome. Empathic design takes this method one step further. Instead of only thinking about a person as a statistic, we should think of them as a story, a life, a soul. We should remember that they celebrate, they mourn, they worry, and they love. If we start thinking about the way these people feel, we are in the direction of making the most impactful change to their lives.
According to IDEO, this goal is achieved by accomplishing two things when tackling an issue: Scaling, and Sustaining. Scaling refers to diversifying and enlarging people and experiences. This means to first, think about all groups of people affected by this issue. Then, target and include all these groups of people to research. Second, start thinking completely outside the range of mainstream methods of research techniques. Having your clients or their consumers go through a related but different experience can sometimes give you the solution you need.
Sustaining refers to the long-term effect of your solution. The goal is always to fix a problem and maintain the cultural change in the system. Empathic design does not aim to produce a temporary solution. Even if the problem at hand is fixed, it aims to solve or help solve future problems. It is not a “take one step forward and two steps backward” kind of method.
“The broadest definition of design is that it transforms current situations into preferred ones.” (Simon 1996)
One of the most corrupt and negligent design flaws in this world is that it was designed for the “default male.” Caroline Criado Perez’s book, Invisible Women, talks about the ways women did not exist in design research. When things like car or seatbelt design she realizes that women were not a variable in this research. Car crash dummies are designed after a standard male and cars are designed to accommodate this build only. This puts women at risk when driving because of our difference in anatomies. Even the system of telling if you have a heart attack is heavily male-focused. Women do not have the same symptoms as men and therefore do not even realize they are having a heart attack. All these issues have a common fault: they were not designed emphatically. They neglected to include women in their research because it would complicate the results. They did not create a system that was open to including women after the fact. They designed around a cis male and pat themselves on the shoulder. Had these designers started with a broader research pool and cared about each of these groups of people, the world would be a safer place for everyone to live in. The goal is to change the overarching culture, to make it an inclusive and more empathic one.