Harnessing the Power of Empathy in Design

... and why we all win when inclusion does.

When we build products, it's important to identify the biases we bring to the work and think about how accessible our products are. As designers, it’s our responsibility to understand the power of the interactions we design for people. Considering disabilities can help prevent exclusion and in building products that work well for everybody.

Transcript

1. Harnessing the Power of Empathy in Design & Why We All Win When Inclusion Does @DaraOke
2. Purpose I hope that we all aspire to start with empathy and that this dialogue encourages us to all think outside of ourselves as we ideate, create, build companies, build the future.
3. Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. -- Morgan Housel
4. Arrived on Earth Became a Texan Enrolled at The University of Texas First Job! Seattle bound Then San Francisco Seattle becomes home Back where it all began Years of childhood exploration, learning, and experiments (learned graphic design, web development, become a professional photographer?!) A little background
5. Empathy the ability to be aware of, understanding of, and sensitive to another person’s feelings and thoughts without having had the same experience. NOUN
6. Product Design An analytical approach to problem- solving to improve the quality of life of the end user and their interaction with the environment. NOUN Product design involves asking a lot of questions, trying to get the bottom of people’s wants and needs, and giving them something that is both useful and delightful to them as a result.
7. UX Design Visual Design Business Strategy Product Design
8. Good Great By learning to think outside of yourself (this isn’t easy!)
9. We all design with bias We automatically create exclusion in everything we build
10. What are your biases?
11. Questions we should consistently ask Am I designing this from only my perspective? How well do I know my users? How can I get to know my users better? Who else can be included in this experience? Who is often excluded from this experience?
12. Understanding Exclusion
13. Sometimes exclusion is permanent
14. Sometimes exclusion is temporary
15. Sometimes exclusion is situational
16. “Designing for people with permanent disabilities can seem like a significant constraint, but the resulting designs can actually benefit a much larger number of people." Source: Microsoft Design The beauty of constraints
17. Design for one, design for many. Source: Microsoft Design
18. If we know those points of exclusion are out there, we can hunt them down, use research and testing to understand them, and use them to fire up our creativity.
19. Design for one, design for many. Source: Microsoft Design
20. Good design is no coincidence but a matter of process
21. Where we often fall short Shifting the process Source: IDEO The work that happens beneath the surface, before you even get to the visual part of the process to understand, who you’re designing for, and  why. Gathering inspiration is more than simply focusing on visual inspiration (*cough* dribbble, behance, your favorite startup). This is an amazing opportunity to challenge your instincts.
22. Think outside the box. Shifting the process Source: IDEO Anything and everything goes during this phase. Prototypes, whether paper or code, should always, always, always, answer lingering questions and test our assumptions.
23. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate Shifting the process Source: IDEO The work isn’t complete simply because you’ve handed your files to dev, or pushed to production. Test your product, get it in front of users on every part of the spectrum, and keep iterating.
24. I can’t come up with any new ideas if all I do is exist in my own life. -- Emi Kolawole