To create a product, you need to feel empathy – Part 1

Gearmark

"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."

— Atticus in Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird 

 

Empathy has been slowing turning into a buzzword. But what is it really? And why is it necessary?

I always like to start these conversations by defining the terms we are using so we are aligned on what we are discussing.

To get started, empathy according to Merriam Webster is defined as:

  1. the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

  2. 2:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also  :  the capacity for this

Sometimes, empathy is confused with sympathy. But they are quite different. Brene Brown helps us understand the difference in this video:

 

 

Empathy allows you to relate to what someone else feels like and what that person may be going through. Sympathy doesn't allow that much of an intense emotional connection between people; it is about observing someone going through something difficult. 

Psychology Today defined the differences between the two, but they included pity and compassion. 

Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings, and often has paternalistic or condescending overtones. Implicit in the notion of pity is that its object does not deserve its plight, and, moreover, is unable to prevent, reverse, or overturn it. Pity is less engaged than empathy, sympathy, or compassion, amounting to little more than a conscious acknowledgement of the plight of its object.

…

Sympathy (‘fellow feeling’, ‘community of feeling’) is a feeling of care and concern for someone, often someone close, accompanied by a wish to see him better off or happier. Compared to pity, sympathy implies a greater sense of shared similarities together with a more profound personal engagement. However, sympathy, unlike empathy, does not involve a shared perspective or shared emotions, and while the facial expressions of sympathy do convey caring and concern, they do not convey shared distress. 

…

Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism.

— Neel Burton, MD, Empathy Vs Sympathy, Psychology Today

I also created a chart to sum this up (I included it in a previous blog post, but just in case for reference):

Pitytocompassion1
 

Products are created out of empathy. Products are sold and marketed through compassion.

Many products are created by an inventor/programmer/creator who is looking to solve a problem that he, and possibly a handful of people, have. This inventor believes that there has to be a better way to do something. If the creation solves problems for a few, someone will usually give the inventor the inspiration to sell the product to other people. If some people are having a particular problem, it logically follows that more must too.
 
Alternatively, the inventor may have an idea and share it with others, who come to find out, have a similar problem. Then someone may suggest the inventor make that product – for real – and market it to others.
 
The key here is how products are created. The inventor:
  • Identifies a problem
  • Observes others with that same problem
  • Realizes that there is a solution
  • Creates the solution
That's empathy in progress. 
 
Marketing such products is a little different when it comes to emotions. Marketing can start at sympathy. With sympathy, you feel bad for your prospects and customers and want to tell them that there is at least one way to solve their problems – your solution. 
 
However, by elevating that connection to empathy, you more deeply connect with the prospects and can relate to their problems. And if you can relate to your customers, that means you can more easily explain how your product can help them from different perspectives and discussions. You get it. And you want to help them get it too through content, social media, and other venues. You feel their pain.
 
And that thought leads you to marketing through compassion. When you market using compassion, you want to solve the prospect’s problems and truly believe that your product is THE solution. You become an evangelist. Additionally, you are more open to collaborating with your customer because you not only understand him and his problems, you highly respect where your customer and prospect is coming from. How he or she got to have the problem they have doesn't matter. What matters is that you get out of the problem together (and use your product).
 
 
Empathy cannot happen through imagination; it is based on experience
There was a study completed recently about creating empathy in business managers, and its findings dismissed the value of empathy. After an initial pass through the research, although shocking, you have to wonder why anyone would bother with empathy. It seems like it would be a waste of time given the study's results.
 
However, after deeper investigation into the study, you have to ask if they were working with a flawed premise when they did the study on empathy.
 
How the study prepped the managers:
The researchers then primed some managers to be empathetic by having them describe a typical customer of the offering and imagine that person’s thoughts and reactions. All managers were asked to predict customers’ desires and took a survey assessing empathy levels. The more empathetic managers were, the more “egocentric” they became; that is, the more likely they were to say that the customers’ preferences were the same as their own.
Did the study miss the point about what empathy is? I think it did. Empathy isn't something you imagine someone else experiencing. Empathy is based on connecting through a shared experience. And by shared experience, I mean an experience that reflects a similar situation.
 
That's what it means to walk in someone else's shoes. It is to experience something similar or parallel to better understand where that person is coming from.
 
Here’s an example. Let's say two people just met in a doctor’s waiting room. One is waiting to hear about the results from his series of blood tests for AIDS. The other is waiting to hear about the results of his biopsy for Stage 4 lung cancer. Both have very different ailments. Both have very different lives. However, the connecting experience is that they both have life threatening ailments and are, right now, waiting to hear about their results. Both are most likely feeling similar anxiety to hear about their health conditions, although they are different. 
 
In some ways, these two people are walking in each other's shoes. It may not be an exact situation, but their situations are similar. Both are in the situation of waiting to hear news about their lives and what’s next. 
 
 
What are the other ways in which the study was flawed?
In the study, people were thinking about what it was like to be the customer and provided data about them. To really know your customer, you need information to help define this person as being separate from you, the marketer or product manager. You still need stats and metrics to know who these people are, what their challenges are, where they get lost in an experience, and try to understand what they think about and what motivates them. 
 
You need to find the commonality shared between you both to try to imagine what an experience COULD be like for them. It's a parallel experience to spark insights.
 
The study used an example of creating a cafe for students. Let's use that one here. And let's use the empathy approach I'm suggesting, where a common or shared experience is created between the prospects/customers and marketing manager.
 
Based on a student persona I'm making up right now, let's say the student:
  • Doesn't have a lot of cash
  • Wants good quality food to stay somewhat healthy
  • Would prefer to use his food plan that parents or scholarship pays for
  • Doesn't have a lot of time to eat
  • Wants something tasty and fun – not vile and gross like institutional food can be
Basically, you want to replicate an experience where someone can find moderately priced food, that is healthy, tastes good, and can be eaten on the go. The hardest part to balance here is the moderately priced food that is healthy. Food that tastes good and is mobile is easy – McDonalds and Burger King has been doing that for a long time.
 
Now let's say you are a marketing manager for the cafe and want to get more students to buy from you. And you want to understand your students better. Let's start with the question: What could be a great parallel experience for you to understand where they are coming from? Maybe a trip to Whole Foods or Central Market. And go there with a budget in mind – $50/person for the week. Or think about experiences at a high-end farmer's market when peaches at $7/lb is just out of budget. How does that experience feel? Are you feeling confident to buy anything? 
 
 
Most likely, you feel like a failure all around – nothing is affordable, you can't stay in budget, and then wonder how you will stay healthy. Suddenly, Burger King sounds like a great idea – you can't afford anything healthy anyway, so at least it should taste good.
 
Now think of a trip to a vegetable stand. I'll use for myself a trip to my local veggie market, which sells vegetables and other items. Some items are expensive, but others aren't. It's affordable and I can feel healthy when I leave. I stay in budget when I go there and get some great food options. I feel successful on two fronts here – I can eat healthy and I can stay under budget.
 
Now, if I were the manager, I'd use that experience at the more reasonable vegetable stand as an experiential connection point with the students. With that in mind, I'd suggest maybe a menu with sandwiches and salads ready on the go, with ingredients that are healthy, familiar and reasonably priced. Not all healthy food is expensive (Kale can be SUPER cheap. As can squashes and sweet potatoes.) The food doesn't need to be too fancy, could be very straightforward, but it uses fresh ingredients. Think roast chicken sandwich with lettuce and a spicy mayo. Maybe throw in the occasional bacon, or use turkey bacon. Or create a salad with reasonably priced ingredients and a fun-flavored dressing. Test different combinations to see how they sell and get to know your customers better.
 
The menu will be particular to your audience. But the understanding you have about your audience is based on the shared experience: wanting to eat good quality food on a budget.
 
 
Feeling empathy isn't about you and your experience. It is about a shared experience with your prospects and customers, the common underlying experience you both are having. You have to take what you learn from that shared experience, what you believe your customers are experiencing, and apply a solution that they will like. 
 
In the next part, we will address why people like Monopoly, what that has to do with empathy, and explore Empathy Exercises more.
 
To create a product, you need to feel empathy – Part 1

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