UXPA 2015 – Growing towards empathy

Just returned from the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) annual conference in San Diego. One of the recurring themes I heard throughout the sessions was the need to practice empathy within our profession. Standford University’s Neema Moraveji, kicked off the conference with a keynote presentation titled “Grow, Design, Repeat” in which he focused on how our own personal growth can help us build better user experiences.

Keynote Highlights

Great UX design requires you to step out of your comfort zone and build relationships with others, whether users, stakeholders or clients. The better you get at building relationships, the more empathy you will have with the experiences of others unlike yourself. We are not our target audience, but as designers and researchers, we are charged with building experiences that our target audience’s find efficient, effective, engaging, error tolerant and easy to learn. In order to do this well, Neema encouraged UX professionals to:

  • Listen – Listen to users identify their values.
  • Be thoughtful – Your users are sharing their thoughts, experiences, elements of their lives. Think about what this means and how your products can have a lasting, meaningful impact.
  • Go beyond the surface – Ask the whys to understand what is really important to users. Don’t accept the first answer but do the work to dig a bit deeper to what truly motivates their behavior.
  • Act with authenticity – Put in the extra effort to act upon what you’ve learned, even if it is something small. Users will appreciate that you’ve acknowledged what is important to them.
  • Confident humility – We will never get everything right, but when we fail, be humble about it and learn.
  • Do one thing well – Despite all the talk of UX unicorns, most of us cannot do everything well. Instead, choose one thing to do well, take calculated risks and truly engage with your users in a way that is challenging, rewarding and ultimately inspiring.

The creation of great user experiences starts with your own personal growth and ability to empathize with others. A great take away and the first step in building a user-driven culture.