What Is Empathetic Design? [+ Examples]

What Is Empathetic Design? [+ Examples]

Hearing directly from customers and including them in the testing process is essential when developing websites, apps, and other products or services. However, this type of market research has its limitations. Customers can be constrained by their experiences and their ability to articulate or even envision what they want a product or service to accomplish. So, how can we bridge these gaps?

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In this post, we will discuss a set of techniques known as empathetic design, which can help identify user pain points and needs during the UX design process.

What is Empathetic Design?

Empathetic design is a collection of techniques aimed at gathering information that traditional observation-oriented market research methods may not reveal. What distinguishes empathetic design from conventional market research is its focus on observation within the customer’s own environment.

This approach involves observing consumers as they use products or services in their daily routines. The data gathered is then analyzed and applied in the design process.

Empathetic design is particularly useful for products or services that customers may not fully understand, or for those that have become overly familiar, leading to established workarounds. This method can uncover needs that users might not recognize or believe can be addressed.

Moreover, it bypasses typical obstacles present in traditional market research, such as focus groups and surveys. These obstacles include respondents' tendencies to provide expected answers to please researchers or avoid embarrassment and the risk of researchers introducing their biases into the questioning process.

Empathetic design enables researchers and developers to answer several key questions:

• Why and when do customers use your product or service? Observing the contexts in which customers engage with your product allows for a comparison between actual usage and intended usage. For instance, while Cheerios was marketed primarily as a breakfast cereal, field observations revealed that it was often used as a portable snack. Discovering such unforeseen use patterns can reveal opportunities for product enhancement or new market entries.
• How does your product or service integrate into the users’ unique processes and routines? Suppose your product is software. By observing customers in their environments, you can identify the other software tools they use and the relationships among them. If users operate multiple tools simultaneously, consider whether an integration could elevate your product’s value or if your tool has distinct competitive advantages over other options.
• Are users reimagining, customizing, or combining your products for their unique needs? For instance, if your company offers household cleaners, empathetic design might reveal that users are mixing different cleaners for specific purposes, such as cleaning curtains. Such findings could lead to new product development or marketing strategies.
• Does your product or service possess any peripheral or intangible attributes, or emotional appeal? Through empathetic design, you might observe customers responding emotionally to your product—like detecting its scent or describing its impact on their feelings. For example, a skincare cleaner might prompt users to comment on how the foaming action enhances their sense of cleanliness. Recognizing these attributes can guide marketing messages.
• What problems do customers encounter with your products or services? Often, these challenges are issues customers do not perceive as solvable or do not even acknowledge as problems. Identifying these obstacles allows for enhancement of existing offerings or the creation of new ones.

The strength of empathetic design lies in connecting customers who have unmet needs with researchers and developers who possess the necessary knowledge and resources to address those needs.

Empathy in Design Thinking

Empathy serves as a foundational principle of design thinking, which emphasizes a user-centered approach to problem-solving by combining spontaneous creativity with extensive hands-on testing.

Empathetic design is a vital initial step within the design thinking framework. It helps identify the needs and goals of target users and determines which ideas require additional testing before a company fully commits to development or redesign.

However, empathetic design goes beyond merely imagining oneself in a user's position. It necessitates actual observation within the user's personal context. Let’s explore the process below.

Empathetic Design Process

The empathetic design process can be broken down into five stages, aligning with the design thinking methodology. We will highlight what makes each stage of the empathetic design process unique, beginning with observation and culminating in prototyping.

Step One: Observing

To initiate empathetic design, an interdisciplinary team should observe users in their homes or workplaces as they engage with the product or service in their everyday routines. Observers can be existing customers or non-customers.

Sending a multidisciplinary team is a crucial distinguishing feature of empathetic design; a team composed of an engineer, designer, and UX researcher will produce diverse observations and richer data.

Step Two: Gathering Data

A key differentiating factor of empathetic design is its dependence on observation rather than questioning. The interdisciplinary team should arrive with guiding questions that prompt them to notice specific user behaviors. Open-ended inquiries such as “Why are you doing that?” might be used, but reliance on visual, auditory, and sensory cues is paramount.

Teams should observe users' body language, unsolicited comments, challenges faced, and any workarounds implemented to tackle these challenges.

Step Three: Brainstorming

At this stage, analyze the data to understand both articulated and unarticulated user needs and brainstorm potential solutions. It can be helpful to convert the textual and numerical data from the previous stage into visual representations of possible solutions. Therefore, brainstorming sessions should be equipped with large notepads, whiteboards, and materials for illustration.

Step Four: Prototyping

At this point, narrow down your ideas to one or two of the most pressing priorities. Identify quick and affordable solutions or obvious pain points affecting most users that need immediate resolution. Once chosen, develop a prototype that could be a paper model, a 3D print, a Lego representation, or a slide deck.

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You can learn more about prototyping in the post, Prototype vs. Wireframe: How to Use Both in Design.

Step Five: Testing

Now that you have a prototype, encourage users to engage with it for further data and feedback collection. After gathering sufficient insights, create an improved version of the prototype. This iterative process can continue until you are satisfied, allowing you to address additional concerns in the design process.

Empathetic Design Examples

To illustrate how to implement empathetic design in your design process, let’s review some real-world examples.

Intuit’s Follow Me Home Program

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Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint, provides tools for over 37 million customers to manage their finances including tracking expenses and handling taxes.

Since 2004, Intuit has operated a “Follow Me Home” program, allowing the company to observe customers across various environments to understand how they utilize the products in their natural context. This insight reveals not just product usage, but customer preferences and challenges encountered. Feedback from such observations has led to considerable product improvements—as seen in the 2016 version of Quicken, which incorporated 121 customer-recommended enhancements.

OXO’s Good Grips Line

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OXO manufactures kitchen utensils, office supplies, and houseware. In 1990, it launched its Good Grips line, revolutionizing consumer products.

The Good Grips line was specifically designed to ease product use for individuals with arthritis and ultimately for everyone. Through observations and interviews, OXO designers and researchers identified that different actions—such as pulling, pushing, or brushing—require specifically designed handles. This led to developing a larger handle made from materials more suitable for gripping, resulting in the distinctive ergonomic form and signature non-slip grip that OXO is known for today.

Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser Black Crown

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Anheuser-Busch Companies is well-known for its Budweiser beer. In 2012, the company assigned its 12 brewmasters the task of creating unique versions of Budweiser, leading to the inception of Project 12.

From 12 recipes, six beers were brewed for national sampling at various events where brand ambassadors observed U.S. beer drinkers and collected feedback regarding taste, freshness, style, and flavor preferences. This observational data ultimately led to the creation of the new golden amber lager called Budweiser Black Crown.

Empathy as a Competitive Advantage

Empathetic design can enable organizations to anticipate user wants and needs even before inquiries arise. The resulting enhancements or new products from empathetic design can serve as significant competitive differentiators. Failing to integrate empathetic design into your design thinking approach could lead to missed opportunities and falling behind in your market.

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