Hi There,
This is going to be a very short blog post but its quite necessary to incorporate this while coming up with a product and even through the design process.
But first, if you are new here, welcome!
Please do well to check out the other articles below and also follow this blog so you won't miss out on the weekly articles.
UX Categories, Career paths in UX, The Gestalt principles, Deceptive patterns in UX, User centred design
Now lets talk about empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand someone else's feelings or thoughts in a situation. It is the ability to share or mirror another person’s expression, needs and motivations.
Here are few tips on how to empathize with users ;
Ask your potential users lots of valid questions during the research.
Become more observant. You don’t assume your users have said everything you need to know. Observe their actions and even how they go about testing your product. It helps you understand if your product is solving the problem it was created to solve.
Be an active listener.
Request for input/feedback from your users. This helps you understand them better and modify or create a solution that addresses their concerns.
Have an open mind. This cannot be over emphasized . It is very important for you as a designer or a UX researcher to keep an open mind while empathizing with the users or potential users of your product. There is no way you can understand their pain points if you don't do this. You need to be able to put yourself in your users shoes and see through their eyes in the given context or situation.
Designers need to spend more time in getting to understand their users needs, wants and objectives. Always remember that as a designer, it is never about you but its always about the solution. And the users for whom the solution was created for will determine if the solution is valid or not.
In my next post, I will be talking about something called an empathy map and how to come up with one.
I hope you found this article helpful. Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section.
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Until my next post,
Bye for now.