Episode 08 Empathic Design

This episode focuses on the popular workplace collaboration tool – Slack. We discussed the key aspects of the overall experience that Slack offers and tried to find out what are those key differentiators that are driving people to not just use it but fall in love with it.

It’s not very unusual to ask the question on where human-centered design is going. UX and role of designers are at peak in this emerging world of technology. Human-centered approach is turning important more than ever. Whether a technology is successful is ultimately not going to be determined only by its level of innovation or its standard of execution rather by desirability of its user. This final episode of the season discusses the rhetoric question of the future of Human-centered design. 

Stories are powerful tool when it comes to create a long-lasting impressions. Stories are way to explain the world. Stories are about communication. A good storyteller is the one who practice the art rather believing that he acquired it. Every product we design and every idea we brings to life through our designs are unique in its own way so until you haven’t invested your time to get the story right, it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to establish a bond with your audience. In this episode, we discussed some of the existing ways for us to tell online and offline stories as designers and what are some of the things that we can learn and practice to master the art of storytelling. 

Empathic design is not just a conceptual thought, it’s a belief that we can understand group behavior, social influences and can develop an emotional and cognitive empathy towards larger number of people. Thus, designing products and services that matches their expectations. The neuroanatomy of our brains may allow us to feel empathy for another’s experiences, but it can also stop us from making cross-cultural connections resulting in an empathy gap. However, an active attempt to understand those cultural and psychological differences through observation, curiosity, active listening and opening up can help us overcome our bias, stereotypes and prejudice for individuals and different groups. In this episode, we will try to understand to what extent we can empathize with a group of people and the effects empathy has on our overall design process.

Inclusive design is a design philosophy that embraces how diverse people are not just in terms of ability but also in terms of race, ethnicity, color, socio-economic religion. We are designing for the world that speaks many languages and has different limitations — physical or cognitive. As a design community, either we can offer an experience that respects these differences or can go a step further to create experiences that welcome people from all walks of life. Through research, we can be closer to everyone to learn more about these difference but most importantly can be closer to those who wants to be a part of the world we are designing. In this episode we will talk about these three concepts of accessibility, usability and inclusion that are crucial for designing products and services. 

Research in design is not different from any other psychological or scientific research. Research help designers to move away from the hindsight bias or ‘know it all along’ phenomenon which can prove to be dangerous specially when we are trying to solve our users problems. Be it attitudinal and behavioral or quantitative or qualitative, research not only opens the door that enlighten us about our users but also help us design better experiences by revealing cultural nuances, beliefs and need. This episode touches upon what it broadly means in UX and the connection it has to our psychological roots.

Complexity in design is very subjective.  A design which might look simple can be difficult to understand but a complex looking system sometimes makes perfect sense.  Simplicity and complexity are not competing thoughts rather concepts that can live in harmony. What makes a complex design appear simple is all its bits and pieces organized in harmony thus making it look more cleaner, more understandable and more easy to act on.  In this episode, we will touch upon our perception on 'complexity' as designers and will make an attempt to separate it out from something which is confusing or complicated.

Emotional design and emotional intelligence are turning mainstream concepts in design. When the former talks about how we should design products that evoke positive emotions in our user, the latter focuses on being intelligent and mindful of context of these emotions. This episode compares the two concepts and covers how to go about designing for emotions.

Conversational UX is not a latest thought. It's happening well before cellphones became a part of our lives. We, humans, are wired for conversations but oblivious to its multifaceted nature. While personal chat is ubiquitous in our daily lives, another groundbreaking technology has slowly and steadily entered in our conversational space and is blurring the boundaries between machines and humans. In this episode, we will talk about how conversation UX and chatbots are posing complex challenges for us designers. 

This episode is a continuation of our journey from the previous episode to take a look at some personalities and incidents that carved the design world that we designers live and breathe today.