WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON?
Designing with empathy
In my work as a communication designer, I not only see empathy as the desired outcome but also as the driving spirit of my design process. Inspired by describing empathy as ‘to care about’, I started to think about what moves people to care for someone or something. Designer and psychologist Jane Fulton Suri has not only been a great inspiration during my theoretical research about empathy but also in formulating design aims and methods. The book “Thoughtless acts? Observations on intuitive design” that she published together with IDEO, encouraged me to look at empathy less analytically but rather emotionally. Since empathy is both about cognitive and affective empathy this seemed to be a fruitful way to move on. I have mainly been working with Empathic Design as it focuses on the emotions behind everyday life actions. Intuitive Design uses the same starting point. Hence, looking at unconscious behavior of others inspired me to consciously look for (missing) empathy that would reveal an access point for my project.
Emotions behind human behavior
I consider taking photos as a great medium to sharpen my view as a designer as well as a documentation method that allows me to capture temporary moments that reflect moods and can exemplarily represent similar situations. Therefore, I decided to observe my direct environment through the lens of my camera. I took several photography walks in Gothenburg, Sweden. Even though I had been to most of the places many times before due to my new intuitive design approach, I was able to see them from a different perspective - I was able to be empathetic with what was going on around me. I developed awareness of the holistic context patched together of individual actions and diversity. We often only realize happenings when something goes wrong or different from usual. But I deliberately paid attention to positive and negative examples of empathy as well as to the grey areas in between.
What do you see in this picture? A street corner in autumn? A row of parked cars on the left and a yellow house in the back? What about the fallen leaves? Are they supposed to cover the pavement? Or the car? Why did no one sweep them away? What are the motivations behind and what are the possible consequences? In being empathetic, I observed these details and tried to connect to them. But I never judged them. Because, what is there that you don’t see? Could you tell that behind the fence on the right is a funeral? Another place full of emotions and full of empathy in all its shapes. On the left, I spotted the rabbit soft toy that someone carefully placed on a junction box. What made the person care about the toy? Or did the person actually care about the owner? Before I took a picture of the situation I let an elderly man pass. He was mumbling unfriendly words to me and seemed to be upset. Did he feel bothered by me? Or by the leaves that haven’t been swiped away? The street corner is not just a street corner. It is a place full of interactions that are not always visible. Empathy helped me to see, hear, and feel some of them.
While I was taking pictures, I constantly discovered new angles and focus points. The photographic journal allowed me to discover details and traits of history that I hadn’t realized before. I found new relationships and marks of human behavior - all motivated by feelings. Thereby I could broaden my understanding of human-centered design. It became more and more clear that empathy is not only important in human interactions but also in interactions with objects, animals, and nature. Empathy is all around us.
I found multiple positive examples of lived empathy. Which makes me question what makes people care about this skill and motivates me to work on designs that highlight the human capacity to do so. On the other hand, those positive examples also made it very obvious where empathy was desperately missing or even purposefully impeded or destroyed. A lot of what happens in public, is tried to be held together by different measures that aim to guarantee smooth interactions. A very prominent example is signs, ranging from traffic signs to stickers and handwritten notes. Simple icons, numbers, and short messages aim to guide, warn and inform people. They are meant to be as easy and fast to understand as possible. They work well in many cases. But what if they are rather threatening than supporting? What if they are dirty or unlighted? What if they became unreadable because stickers had been posted all over them? What if those signs are not as universal as their designers think? What if people have different capacities of seeing, reading and recognising? My observations made me think about “What is really going on here?”. Did someone really want to make a traffic sign unreadable? Or was one rather in need of a space to let out his feelings?
Many of the human-initiated situations I documented show an urge for emotional expression. People who are looking for other people or objects, people who want to publish their opinions, their frustration, their hopes, and desires. I found several lost belongings that had been carefully placed for their owners to find them again. I saw letters that promised beautiful apartments, finder’s rewards, and community activities. Cans that had been arranged for bottle scavengers, a gully cover that had been sprayed in neon pink to ask people to watch out for this pitfall, candles in front of house doors to light up the dark, a stranger’s note that says: “Don’t forget how strong you are. Everything is going to be alright. Breathe.” They are all signs of interest, care, and empathy. But I also found carelessly thrown away trash and cigarette stubs, damaged trees, schools covered in vandalic graffiti, racist stickers, and nasty doggy bags. These pictures rather show another level of empathy that rather indicates careless behavior, indifference, and apathy.
The Empathy Spectrum
This is when I realized what the skill empathy actually means: Empathy is nothing one either has or hasn’t, but a human trait that one has to care about. What motivates people to interact with themselves and their environment in kind and respectful ways? Why seems some people more interested in developing themselves further and in building sustainable relationships than others?. Considering that every human being naturally thrives for self-actualization this appeared to be quite controversial. So what moves people to be empathetic? Before we thrive for self-actualization, we have to make sure that other basic needs are met. What if we feel like our needs aren’t responded to by people who care about us? We might wreak our emotions in inappropriate places. Even against nature. But what nature has ahead of us humans is that it always thrives for biodiversity and mutual co-existing. Not only when I was taking the pictures but also when I organized them digitally and arranged them next to each other, the idea of seeing empathy as a spectrum became more and more steady. With apathy and indifference on the far left end and empathy and interest on the far right end. All pictures, all behavior, lies within the spectrum. The question is “Where is it in the spectrum of empathy?” and even more importantly “Why is it there?”. Through my photographic project, I highlighted “needs and problems worth solving” (Fulton Suri, 2005, 167) as well as self-initiated solutions by people who tried to make a difference. I discovered patterns and reoccurring acts that lead me to a new understanding of empathy. Through my sensitive, curious approach, I found several examples of ‘thoughtless acts’ that might - from how I see them now - not be as thoughtless as one might expect. I rather see them as traits of people’s emotions that have remained unrecognized because of insufficient empathy. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, as manifestations of the idea that care and respect are a choice. A choice that enables various possibilities for human interaction and different levels of empathy within the spectrum.
Designing with the spectrum
My journey of intuitive observation has helped me “to become more sensitive to sociocultural habits and the meanings conveyed by particular design attributes. (…) Observation of naturalistic behavior helps (…) to sense and respond to people’s subjective emotional experiences. Observation reveals what is happening, but it takes interpretation and speculation to understand why. (…) Interpretation and speculation inevitably take us a step beyond the purely objective to a subjective level, where we draw on empathy.” (Fulton Suri, 2005, 172-173) Hence, not only my observations but especially reflecting upon my experiences and the pictures, allowed me to engage with the Empathy Spectrum in my own design process. The Empathy Spectrum is not only the core insight I gained during this practical work but it also informed my design research to never stop asking “What is really going on?”. And in turn “How can (my) design encourage people to develop an intrinsic interest in carefully moving towards the right end of the spectrum?”.
References:
Fulton Suri, Jane. 2005. Thoughtless acts?: Observations on intuitive design. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Riess, Helen. 2018. The Empathy Effect : Seven neuroscience-based keys for transforming the way we live, love, work, and connect across differences. Boulder: Chronicle Books.