From the course: Empathy in UX Design
Where is your starting point?
- I was drawn to user research many years ago because I like investigating, exploring, and solving puzzles. I have remained a user researcher for all these years because it wasn't just solving puzzles that was a good personal match. As a very empathetic person, I discovered a lot of emotional resonance. I have a natural capacity for empathy, and I am with some accuracy able to discern the feelings of others and feel those feelings in the way that helps me uncover product insights. That's not to say that empathy is all good. In fact, I also experience negative feelings of others too. Stress, sadness, anger, and even when I'm just an innocent bystander, it still can be painful. But let's save that discussion for a bit later in this course. What about you? You may be attracted to user experience because of your curiosity about people or about the human side of technology or because you like to be creative. Like me, your first consideration may not have been about empathy. Yet here you are wondering about that overlap. You most certainly have a capacity for empathy, and you most certainly have experienced feelings of empathy at some point. Yet you may or may not consider yourself a naturally empathetic person. That's okay. I'll submit to you that while a dictionary definition of empathy as capacity to feel implies some sort of natural ability, you're either empathetic or you're not, in fact, it's really referring to the automatic triggering of that capacity. But empathy can also be willful and based on intent. You can choose to change the lens of your mental camera. You can choose to have empathy, and you can choose to grow your empathy in necessary and purposeful ways. You can enhance your abilities as a UX professional and as an in-house employee consult into a freelancer. Building your own capacity for personal empathy is the first step towards feeling that empathy, both personally and professionally.
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