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When UX designers talk about “empathy,” they might as well talk about burning incense and scattering chicken entrails. 1
The hyper-rationalist developers (and the entrepreneur’s who empower them) all giggle up their sleeves at the touchy-feely, soft and insubstantial verbiage. 2
Then they go right back to making it the way they always have: So that it makes sense to THEM. 3
While developers in general are open to unfamiliar tools that might help them make better products, they are skeptical. They judge the new tools with the same thought processes they use to assess code. 4
Their judgment is literal, rational, and deterministic, because that’s how they think about code. They want to make sure that, if the user is competent, the tool will give the same results every time. 5
Personally, I would sooner tell a programmer that I’m doing a horoscope for a design before I claimed I was using “empathy.” That’s just asking for disdain. 6
Now, of course a good designer needs empathy. But empathy isn’t worth much in the design world. That is, if design is like beer, empathy is like malted barley. 7
What’s important isn’t empathy itself. What’s important is what you can do with your empathy. What useful insight does your empathy get for you? What does your empathy tell you about the user? 8
Your colleagues will be very interested in these insights, as long as you don’t tell them they came from “empathy.” If you do, your insights will lose credibility. 9
For me, I never even used the term “empathy.” Instead, I tried very hard to put away my own point of view and adopt the mind set of the user. That was very effective. It allowed me to…empathize. 10
I developed a way to create archetypal users so that I could exercise, examine, and communicate the user’s mental models, motivations, and desired end-states. What you might call a “empathy machine.” 11
I put these "empathy machines” into representative user situations and role-played their experience. This resulted in very useful and effective understanding of what the user needed and what would hinder their progress. 12
So, I don’t have a very high opinion of “empathy” as a design tool. I do, however, have a very high opinion of effective tools that allow me to empathize with the user and understand their point of view. 13
I say this because I see a lot of designers claiming that they can do good interaction design because they have empathy. I don’t think that is true. I think they need tools and process, instead. 14
