The Other Side of Empathy - JSConf EU 2015

In an industry that is so focused frameworks & tooling, we tend to lose sight of the people behind the products and how we work with them. I’ve found empathy to be a powerful resource while collaborating with teams inside companies and across the open source community. By breaking down The Other Side of Empathy, I will demonstrate how applying its principles to your development process will benefit the community and the products they create.

Transcript

1. The Other Side of Empathy
3. Who Am I?
4. Who Am I? Nick Hehr Empathetic Community Member Front-End Developer Disney Fan Bouldering Enthusiast
6. Why Do I Care?
7. Why Do I Care? Psychology & Leadership Degree Constant Collaboration w/ Designers & Devs I Community
9. Who Should Care?
10. Everybody
12. What Is Empathy?
13. What Is Empathy? The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
14. What Is Empathy? Seeing the world through the eyes of someone else.

15. Where Did The Other Side of Empathy Come From?
16. Where Did It Come From? Using Twitter Snap Judgements Mob Mentality
17. Breakdown
18. Breakdown Context Constructive Feedback Communication Caring
19. Context
20. The internal and external factors that influence the decisions we make and actions we take.
21. How It Relates No One is Un-Opinionated We All Have Biases Listening is Key “Why?”
23. Set The Example
24. Example User Stories with Gherkin
25. It captures the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘why’ of a requirement in a simple, concise way.
26. Remembering Context Take A Deep Breath Clear Your Mind Ask “Why?” (sincerely) Listen
27. Constructive Feedback
28. “The return of information that helps to develop or improve.”
29. How It Relates “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
31. How It Relates “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
32. How It Relates “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
33. How It Relates “If you don’t have anything constructive to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
34. What about negative feedback?
36. Good Feedback > 140 characters
38. Mutually Agreed Upon Set Up With Expectations In An Open Space Shared With Context Constructive Feedback is…
39. Example Code Reviews
40. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked, improving both the overall quality of software and developers' skills.
41. Encouraging Constructive Feedback
43. https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/ CONTRIBUTING.md
44. https://github.com/hoodiehq/hoodie/blob/master/ CONTRIBUTING.md
45. Communication
46. The successful sharing of ideas and feelings between people.
47. Communication is a broad area that encompasses how we interact with each other.
48. How It Relates What We Say How We Say It Where We Say It
49. “I” Statements For Giving Constructive Feedback For Getting Context
50. “You” Statements For Getting Context For Giving Constructive Feedback
51. Example Switching Platforms
52. How We Communicate General = Slack Standups = Hangouts / In-Person Recorded Discussions = GitHub Issues Long-Form / Async = Email
53. Creating Communication
57. https://<your-team>.slack.com/ customize/slackbot
58. Caring
59. To provide the needs of something and show interest in it.
60. How It Relates Caring is Sharing And Listening And Understanding
61. How Much Do You Care?
62. Do You Care Enough… To Write A Blog Post? To File An Issue? To Send An Email? To Record A Screencast? To Submit A Pull Request?
63. – Yoda “Don’t give in to hate. It leads to the Dark Side.”
64. Example Documentation
65. Documentation Matters Wikis Code Comments Styleguides Pattern Libraries README.md
66. Exemplifying Caring
67. Mentoring Matters Remember Starting Out? Did You Have A Mentor? Did You Want A Mentor? Do You Want To Learn?
68. Contributing • Just Listen For A Day • Apply The Examples • Start Off Small • Remain Open to Sharing
69. “It still sounds like too much work.”
71. Resources hipsterbrown.com/empathy
72. Thank You