14. You need no empathy

What you need is a method.

Assuming that to design a good experience for your users, you only need empathy is a game where if you can’t empathize with your users, you lose.

However, when you apply the method and the appropriate techniques to observe the behavior of your users, you develop the necessary rationale for your design and, consequently, develop empathy.

Empathy is not something you have or don’t have. And if you don’t have it, UX is not for you.

It’s not a superpower with which you read the minds of your users and know what they need.

The ability to empathize with someone is largely about the ability to understand what they are going through, how they are feeling, and to predict what they will do next.

This is easily achievable if we ourselves have been through the situation in which the person we want to empathize with finds themselves.

This is because our ability to understand something is intimately linked to our past experiences, our own mental model.

It is not natural for us to understand something that we cannot compare in our own mind with something equal or very similar that we have lived through.

However, we can develop our ability to empathize with experiences we have never lived.

It is something you develop as you observe your users in the specific context of their tasks.

Empathy is a byproduct of doing what is necessary to understand your user, their problems, their needs, and their context.

You need to observe your users in the context of the task.

Observing users makes everything more evident.

You don’t need a superpower.