Being Designerly: Be Empathetic

In this series of posts about Being Designerly, we explore ways to be more creative by thinking, feeling, and acting like a designer. The previous posts discussed designerly behaviors like Putting People First and skills related to the head (thinking): Curiosity, Observation and Critical Thinking; we now begin the designerly skills related to the heart (feeling) with Empathy.

Be Empathetic: understanding and sharing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others.

Successful designers routinely use empathy in human-centered design. They start with an understanding of the people they are designing for, by observing them and immersing themselves in their users’ environments. Designers then apply that deep understanding to design products and experiences that work for those users.

Being empathetic can help you succeed both professionally and personally. Empathy is important in occupations that involve helping others, like design, education, social work, and healthcare. Empathy also helps us relate to others and build social connections that are beneficial for our health, wellness, and emotions. Empathy - the recognition of others’ emotions - is a key element of Emotional Intelligence (EI). When you make empathy a habit, you tend to manage your own emotions more effectively, in turn improving your Emotional Intelligence and your chances of success in life.

According to psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman, there are three types of empathy:

1. Cognitive empathy is the ability to get into another person’s head and understand their perspective and how they see things. This helps us communicate better with others. 
2. Emotional empathy is the ability to sense and feel what another person is feeling. This helps us build rapport and emotional connections with others. 
3. Compassionate empathy goes beyond understanding others and sharing their feelings by driving us to do what we can to help them. This helps us make a difference in people’s lives.

Simply put, empathy that results in thinking, feeling, and doing are all important and have their place in our personal and professional lives. Like curiosity, empathy can be learned, practiced, and improved over time. Seek out new perspectives and experiences and follow these steps to be empathetic:

Suspend judgement

It is difficult to be empathetic if you are mentally judging the other person. If you voice that judgement, you will not be able to be empathetic, and the other person may stop sharing with you.

Listen attentively with your eyes and ears

Engage more than one sense to listen actively so that you can respond deeply. Remember that we have two eyes, two ears and only one mouth. Pay attention to what the other person is saying, not how you need to respond. Be completely present with the other person, putting aside our modern distractions. Pavlovian responses to notifications, alerts, buzzes, and dings are empathy killers. 

Practice & Reflect

Opportunities to practice are all around us – family, friends, neighbors, people we come across daily. Intentionally be empathetic in those interactions. Then reflect on how you responded, and the type of empathy involved. Looking back, was that appropriate? Would you have liked it if they had responded like you did? For more opportunities, be a fly on the wall and observe other people’s empathetic interactions. 

Empathy often needs a conscious choice and takes practice. Be empathetic!

In two weeks, we will focus on advocating for others, another designerly behavior related to the heart (feeling). You should also sign up for curated content on the topic every other week at news.beingdesignerly.com. I hope these will help you, designer or not, be more creative and innovative by being designerly!