Picture credit - Claire Cain Miller - New York Times
Day 48 - Empathy
27 May 2020
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sirurp@gmail.com
My learning for the day
Today I want to summarise two books on interpersonal skills. Thanks Clifford Chi for your recommendation
Book 1 - Well-Designed: How to Use How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love
Summary -
Feeling and experiencing the emotional world (aka Empathy) of the person you are designing for is the key to successful design.
The author champions this view - Designing is about designing for feelings, not features - giving your product a personality and soul that connects with users rather than introducing just another layer of functionality into their lives.
This means understanding the following three things before designing the product or service -
People’s goals (we are emotionally invested in our goals)
People’s expectations (expectations determine our emotional responses)
People’s emotional response to how something ‘feels’ when it is used.
Emotional Value Proposition
Most brands have a value proposition (a promise to produce value for a customer). The author advocates companies to work on emotional value proposition too (look at emotional outcomes – how people feel as opposed to what they do when building the proposition).
Kolko recommends this format of an empathy value proposition -
After using [product] people will feel* more [positive emotion] (and/or will feel less [negative emotion]).
*The 10 feelings psychologists use to measure happiness internationally are - the frequency you feel these five positive feelings – active, determined, attentive, inspired, alert vs. the frequency you feel these negative feelings – afraid, nervous, upset, hostile, ashamed
Here are the four key steps: (1) Determine a product-market fit by seeking signals from communities of users, (2) Identify behavioral insights by conducting ethnographic research, (3) Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights, and (4) Polish the product details using visual representations to simplify complex ideas.
Whatever you’re designing, give your product a personality. Kolko argues that audiences are essentially in dialogue with the products they use.
Book 2 - Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy
Author - Dev Patnaik
Summary -
The essence of the book is - the problem with business today isn’t a lack of innovation; it’s a lack of empathy
The Pattie story
Early one morning in 1979, Pattie Moore, a young designer living in New York, transformed herself into an old woman three times her age (strapped herself into a body brace that made her shoulders hunch forward, wore a white wig, plugged up her ears so she couldn’t hear, put on glasses that blurred her vision….).
And then stepped out to feel the world as an old lady. What she realised was the world was not designed for senior citizens (Pill bottles demanded too much dexterity. Telephones were too hard to dial. Climbing the steps onto a city bus was a dangerous ordeal). She continued this experiment for over three years. Pattie’s experience opened up a new generation of ‘Empathetic designers’.
This story (and many more such stories) of how companies prosper when they reach out and connect with other people forms the basis of this book.
When people in an organization develop an intuitive vibe for what’s going on in the world, they’re able to see new opportunities. A widespread sense of empathy starts to influence the culture of a place, giving it a sense of clarity and mission.
Though a business book, it seeks to answer questions that are relevant to all - businesspeople, educators, designers, marketers, athletes, policymakers….
This is how the book is organised -
The miopia - how organizations lose sight of the real world and how they might regain that connection
The empathy culture - how we can create a widespread sense of empathy across a large group of people
The pay off - how the widespread empathy can help companies to see opportunities faster, prosper for longer, ensure ethical conduct, and instill a personal sense of meaning in each employee
Hope this helps you do a deep dive to draw out your empathy and make your organisation prosper, emotionally and financially.
What is Empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
This is a nice quote that explains the difference between Empathy and Sympathy -
“Empathy is walking a mile in somebody else's moccasins. Sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt.” ― Rebecca O'Donnell
This is what Webster Dictionary says -
Sympathy - an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other
Empathy - the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
Compassion - sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
My learning so far on this topic
Day 8 post - 5 People Who Changed the World By Taking Compassion to the Extreme
Day 18 post - How brands are using empathy to enhance marketing
Day 28 post - Types of unempathetic people
Day 38 - Two TED talks - Trash cart Superheroes & Compassion and the true meaning of empathy
How to improve this skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Empathy.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Empathy.
Learn - Invest time in learning different frameworks/ models/ techniques of Empathy
Apply -
Identify a model suitable to you
Create a template to document the flow of the process
Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
Maintain record/ process flow of every important activities you did with respect to Empathy
Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
Share - Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
Train - Generate opportunities to train your peers and team members so that, over time, your organization benefits from your efforts
Purpose of this document
I took a 66 day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
My objectives of learning these skills were - To strengthen my mind to face life’s challenges with ease, To use these skills in my worklife for a better performance, To use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships, To open new possibilities to surprise myself.
This is my next 66 day challenge (from 10 April 2020) - To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as - psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
1. Decision-making
2. Problem-solving
3. Creative thinking
4. Critical thinking
5. Communication
6. Interpersonal skills
7. Self-awareness
8. Empathy
9. Coping with emotions
10. Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand - prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico - prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom - child abuse prevention
- USA - prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia - positive socialization of children.
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