DESIGN : Empathic Rooted Design

As defined by Peter Salovey and John D Mayer “emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (Mayer & Salovey, 1990, p.1). Only in the past twenty years has the world been exposed to a burst of scientific studies of emotion. Emotion was once a transparent term to the scientist, designer and engineer. Something that is difficult to measure, without numbers, charts or streams of data to work from. Until technology prospered again and gave way to innovative methods in which we can prove emotion in the human brain.

Given scientific proof of emotions in the brain, psychologists and researchers have found a rich and interactive domain in emotion and human need and this is the need for empathy (Chapman, 2007, p.18). Simply put, empathy is the reason we care. The more intuitive we are to our own emotions, the better we are at reading the feelings of others. Built on self – awareness, the ability to register another’s feelings is part of the makings of being human. This ability calls for action in many areas in life – from sales and management to relationships and parenting and discussed in this chapter from the design of products to the design of websites.

The common assumption of empathy is that it is the experience of kindness throughout the day; the offering of emotional sensitivity and the positive feeling one gets for caring. However, the power of empathy can transform our lives to a much greater extent than is realized (Krznaric, 2014). Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard psychologist was one of the first to bring a large body of research together, formulating new ideas about the importance of empathy. Rosenthal’s research focused on a person’s ability to read nonverbal messages, challenging their ability to read emotions. As previously stated the ability to read another person’s emotions is what makes us empathic. Rosenthal devised the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS test): a series of videotapes displaying a young woman expressing distinct emotional feelings. The viewer’s task was to read these nonverbal expressions and identify with each one. The PONS test was tried over seven thousand people in the United States and eighteen other countries.  This measure of empathic acuity affirms empathy’s independence from other intelligences (Goleman, 1996, p.97).

There is now revolutionary information derived from research models on empathy and its importance in life. Adhering to technological advancements, this information is now accessible worldwide and in the past decade, there has been a surge of empathic action. Evident from the introduction of ‘Roots of Empathy’, an education program that teaches young children how to be empathic, in schools across Canada, Britain and New Zealand; to blind guide museums, museums that are in complete darkness presenting to the visitor the reality of being visually impaired. These actions are two of many initiatives taken in the revolutionary surge of empathy (Krznaric, 2014). 

But what exactly is empathy? How does the designer encompass this emotion into their work? Empathy is the imaginative leap into the shoes of another person, as you walk around in these shoes you begin to understand that person’s feelings from their perspective. Empathy in action is the use of this awareness to make better of a situation or problem (Krznaric, 2014).

One designer, whose development of empathy was through the direct experience of other people’s lives, is Patricia Moore. In 1979, Moore devised an experiment that would determine her place as a pioneering figure for future empathic movements. Moore was the only woman of three hundred and fifty designers in the top design firm Raymond Loewy in New York. At age twenty-six she challenged her fellow colleagues in a conference meeting concerning design plans for a refrigerator. “Couldn’t we design the door so that somebody with arthritis would find it easy to open” Eyes rolled, pencils were slammed on the table, and the typical response filled the room. “Pattie. We don’t design for those people!” (Moore, 2005). Infuriated by this response, the young designer set out to conduct an empathy experiment that would change the way we viewed the designed world. If the top design firm in New York was not going to design for ‘those people’, Moore began to question the role of design. If design can only work for a certain group of people surely it hasn’t solved the problem. She began her exploration into the future to discover what it would be like to be an eighty-five year old woman. 

The transformation began straight away. She layered latex on her face to create wrinkles, impaired her sight and hearing with the use of clouded glasses and earplugs, clipped braces on her body leaving her to be constantly hunched over and even wore uneven shoes so to weaken her balance, forcing her to walk with a stick (Moore, 2005).  

With variations in dress and costume, Moore was able to empathize with elderly women of different social status. She experienced kindness and rejection, help and abuse, but extraordinary findings were made on how our society treats elderly people and elderly people of different social class. When Patricia Moore came out of disguise at thirty years of age, she admitted that she was changed forever as a person and a designer. This sparked a passion to create designs for the total human lifespan. The neglect towards appropriate design left the eighty five year old ‘Pattie Moore’ struggling to open cereal boxes, walk across the road and the ability to use kitchen appliances, making everyday life a battle. The discoveries that Patricia Moore made formulated her thinking about design and contributed to the growing influential design movement in America.  

It was 1989, Sam Farber the founder of the successful kitchenware maker Copco, Inc. reached out to the now well-known Patricia Moore, for advice in an appeal to produce kitchenware with older and disabled users in mind. The design incorporated chunky, resilient handles on tools like knives and peelers for twist and push-pull motions. The handles were oval in cross section, equally distributing the force on the users hand while enhancing grip. These tools were tested when hands were dry and wet and with people who have arthritis or other physical disabilities.

By 1999, the Oxo product line had grown to 350, with garden tools, barbecue tools, and other products that spurred from looking at common everyday things and finding ways to make them better. The Oxo peeler is one of many design outcomes from Patricia Moore’s empathic transformation.

However, Chapman argues that empathic design has a lifespan. He disputes that product longevity is dependent upon the sustainability of the empathy applied. The deterioration of empathy is evident by the type of relationship the user has with the product. A failed relationship would lead to the dumping of one object by another. There is a desire for fresh new things for the ever evolving self that by default leads to resentment of the old. “The consumer quest for meaning continues as it always will: however until products embody a transient flexibility to shift and adapt in sync with us, we will always be adding to an immense landfill of transferred matter whose only crime was a failure to keep up” (Chapman, 2007, p.52). This statement makes evident that to create from empathy is a crucial yet demanding task. Although during the design process designers believe they are being empathic towards the consumer or user, this empathy may not hold the same lifespan as that of the materialized object. The expiry of empathy may by-pass the expiry of the design itself.

Did Patricia Moore waste her time? It’s unlikely so. Since its debut, the Oxo product line has won worldwide acclaim including awards from the Arthritis Foundation and nearly –annual IDEA awards from the Industrial Designers Society of America. These products have been selected for permanent collections at the Chicago Atheneum, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, and the Museum of Modern Art. Despite media attention, the Oxo line was presented at a global conference on Universal Design in Providence, Rhode Island for “Design for the 21st Century”. Today, Oxo are constantly reiterating its mission to create products for people of all ages and levels of abilities. Oxo is a constant reminder of the common needs faced by people and the importance of empathy in the design process in meeting these needs (World Kitchen, 2000).

Patricia Moore’s empathic action has affirmation against Chapman’s argument, that depending on the awareness of the empathy applied, the emotion within the product can outlive the material and by further growth influence the future of design.

In the digital age we live in today, how can we transfer the workings behind one Oxo peeler to that of a website?

The internet play’s an increasingly central role in our lives of all ages and cultures, to news and information, government services, health resources and opportunities for social support. With 85% of US adults using the Internet, according to a survey by Pew Internet Projects, the designer can no longer ignore this digital transformation. How does the designer develop empathic interactions online? Proposed is the transferal of emotional intelligence, illustrated by Patricia Moore, to the design of a website. In 2015, the best pharmaceutical website was awarded to Gene.com by WebAward. Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops and manufactures pharmaceutical medicine to treat patients with serious illness. This website will be assessed with further analysis into what makes an empathic website.

“You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it”  (Lee, 2006, p.39). While empathy is defined as the ability to share and understand the feelings of another person, this emotional human need is crucial in websites where the online visitors are most vulnerable and unstable. Out of the 85% of Americans online, 72% presented that they search for health information via websites, indicating the need for information to be presented with human compassion.

Driven towards creating change to a more empathic approach to pharmaceutical websites is Bridget Duffy, MD, who is co-founder of ExperiaHealth and the CMO for a real-time communication service for healthcare environments - Vocera Communications. She believes that pharmaceutical companies work harder at providing certain legally required information while the patient’s emotions and feelings are ignored. If a compassionate approach was given to the design of the website much of the stress and tension felt by patients struggling with an illness could be alleviated. With the Internet constantly growing, online purchasers of pharmaceutical products deserve an experience that is “comparable with, or superior to, offline healthcare encounters,” (Davies, 2015). Offline healthcare encounter’s are with professionals who have undergone emotional training making them better equipped to identify the feelings of patients. The designer should recognize the need for this intelligence in order to transfer it to the design of the website. Listening to patients and their problems is an important aspect of displaying empathy. This can be achieved on the web, by making websites interactive and user-friendly.

To obtain information, we rely on our senses. Physiological changes may occur in all our senses as we age, or due to illness, this in turn reduces our sensitivity to incoming information. Age related physiological changes must be considered when designing for a pharmaceutical company as a large number of patients are of an older age. These changes are important to empathize with as they lead to the decline in a person’s ability to read detail, to focus, to discriminate between levels of contrast and to adapt to changes in color and light (Clarkson, 2003). All of these changes equate to the design characteristics that must be considered. It is evident that the website Gene.com has empathized with users with sight impairments, in their manner of displaying important information. In Image (3) conversational and reassuring language is used creating an emotional bond with the user, evident in the words ‘We’re here to help. Call us…’ Not only does the conversational language make the user feel as if there is a person behind the screen, the user has easily gained access to this information.

Accessibility is acknowledged with the text being set in a larger size distinct from the rest of the article. The use of color is carefully chosen, the shade of blue creating a calm and therapeutic environment, similar to that of a doctor’s waiting room. The contrast of the text against a white background also grants easy readability for people with sight impairments whether from old age or through a physical illness.

Gene.com inhibits a well- designed, interactive domain where the interface is user friendly. Duffy’s argument, however, suggests that more could be achieved with the amplitude of empathy. Gene.com does not have a live chat option. Pharmaceutical companies could learn from social media sites where a window pops up to offer advice in a live chat. This interaction does not take long, but helps direct the user to the information they wish to possess. Another feature Duffy proposes is of a mobile phone application that the user could be directed to from the website that focuses solely on the illness or medication suited to their needs. All of these considerations from language choice, personal interactions and interest in the patient’s opinion exhibit empathy from the pharmaceutical website (Davies, 2015).

The importance of emotion in design equates to the design for human needs. Empathy, the ability to step into somebody else’s shoes in order to understand their feelings, is not only essential in our daily lives but also when designing for the world we live in. Patricia Moore has shown through design that empathy can make for a happier and more fulfilling life. The methods used by Moore have been compared to the design of a website, where Duffy argues that there is still a lot of work to be achieved.