Designing with Empathy

All too often, as designers, we create products that work for people like us. Even with the best intentions, if you don’t have practices in place to ensure you are considering a diverse audience, you will naturally pivot to designs you would use yourself.

Employing inclusive design methodology and empathising with diverse groups of people helps us create products that work for everyone.

How can you begin to design with empathy?

To achieve empathy for your users, whoever they are, you need to be able to put yourself in their shoes and understand who you are designing for. What do they want? What do they need? How does their use differ from yours? And Why?

It can be challenging to understand others’ perspectives, especially when they strongly diverge from your own, but for inclusive design, it’s essential.

Luckily, there is a straightforward way you can learn what your users think. Ask them.

What does this mean in practice?

Research

Whether you’re creating something from scratch, or looking to improve an existing product, research is a vital first step. Methods like contextual inquiries and interviews can help you find out what your users look for and need in a product.

For both, it’s important to talk to people as close to your real or potential users as possible and to make sure they represent an accurate cross-section.

Interviews

In contrast to quantitative research, interviews allow us to build better relationships and understanding of users. Interviewees can fully explain their viewpoints, and interviewers can ask follow-up questions to ensure they comprehend what they have learnt. This leads to a better understanding between both parties.

Contextual Inquiries

Contextual Inquiries go further than interviews and allow us to see how our products and services are used in the real world. In these sessions, researchers observe users interacting with their products in their own environments and on their own devices, including any assistive technologies they may use.

Often, during interviews, users will not remember exactly how they perform actions. They skip steps or incorrectly estimate how long it takes them to complete different parts of tasks. Conducting contextual inquiries is the best way to get a complete picture of product use.

Seeing where users are struggling or how they adapt your product to work for them, can inspire product designs/changes that solve issues you identify.

User Personas

User personas help designers understand and empathise with their users. They’re semi-fictional characters based on users. They must be based on research, not just your assumptions, or they won’t help you make design decisions that will benefit any of your users.

Personas are useful tools for design decisions. If you are unsure how part of your product should function, think about how your personas would interact with it. Consider what they need and what would improve their experience, and you should have your answer.

Testing

Testing is valuable at every stage of design. In the initial stages, you can use low-fidelity wireframes that demonstrate rough functionality to understand if you’re headed in the right direction. And, once you’re further along, usability testing can give you more detailed feedback on high-fidelity prototypes. And with A/B testing, you can even gather opinions and data post-go-live.

For every type of testing, who you are testing with is crucial. Relying on your colleagues and friends won’t give you a realistic view of how your product will be used. It’s worth the time and financial investment to ensure you have a panel of subjects representative of your user base.

The relationship between inclusive design and accessibility

Inclusive design and accessible design are closely related; both focus on improving the usability of products – however, they differ in scope.

Accessibility evaluates whether a product can be accessed by individuals with disabilities. Inclusive design is an approach to creating products usable in any environment by as many people as possible.

As inclusive design aims to create products everyone can use, accommodations for people with disabilities can often also be covered by this approach. Nevertheless, you must not assume that if you’ve taken an inclusive approach, your website will automatically meet accessibility standards. It is worth combining both approaches to ensure your product satisfies as many users’ requirements as possible.

Embracing User Diversity

We need to move away from preconceived ideas of a ‘typical’ user and look at people as unique, diverse individuals whose abilities vary and change throughout their lives and due to their environment.

When, as designers, we pay attention to the people who are using our products, we can use empathy and think from their perspective to apply our learnings and create more user-friendly products that work for the majority of people and meet accessibility guidelines in the process.