Active Empathy
Are you equipped with the right tools to discover empathic insights and integrate them in your strategy and culture?
In business, it’s no longer enough to understand customers. Teams should approach empathy differently to drive sustainable innovation and turn benefits into long-term value consistently and at scale.
But empathy is no easy feat. There isn't one way to define or express it, yet most agree that we need empathy to create meaningful experiences. People struggle to form real bonds and act on their empathic drive because current understanding and practices don't do empathy enough justice to emerge consistently and at scale.
In our pursuit to create a better tool for empathy, we discovered 3 odd things about empathy that influenced our journey to build Active Empathy. Empathy has a complex shape, peculiar properties, and dynamics that make it hard to mold it into meaningful connections.
#1. Empathy has a shape.
Empathy has a shape but not a defined body. It comes in many forms depending on culture, context, or a person triggering the interaction. These connections bring us closer to people we work with (our colleagues), we create for (our customers), and people we don't know but will touch in some way (the market).
So, what is the shape of empathy? If you had to draw it, what would it look like? This question was the beginning of our journey to explore what makes empathy difficult to work with. At first, we had no idea if we would find a shape that looked like empathy. Perhaps, it was naïve to think of it that way. But our research took us to an unusual place - the field of mathematics.
We stumbled upon a most peculiar yet fascinating shape that our eyes couldn't pinpoint. The shape I'm talking about is a Klein bottle. The concept was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. It's a unique representation of a constant loop of emergence as the inside turns into the outside. A bottle that can't hold water.
Figure 1. The shape of empathy as a Klein bottle
It became obvious why empathy is hard: it had an extra dimension! Empathy is 4-dimensional and cannot be fully represented as an ordinary 3D object. This dimension makes it hard to visualize and mold into meaningful connections. The hidden component was the abundant tacit knowledge required to create empathic responses. The extra dimension was necessary to access intuition, expertise, and practical experience without needing a defined container with fixed coordinates pinpointing "the inside" or "the outside." Empathy has no boundary, so it contains itself. There is no "edge" but only "unseen" distance between the designer and the customer. Its ambiguity is its greatest property.
I am because you are. The meaning of Ubuntu.
It is necessary to see empathy as a 4-dimensional space with no boundaries to recognize the continuous interplay between a designer and a customer and their co-dependence. The extra dimension helps you access intuition, expertise, and practical experience in a constant loop of emergence and co-creation.
#2. Empathy is "filled" with gaps.
Employing empathy comes with a realization – there will always be a gap between you and others. This gap is a space to explore what is meaningful to people and improve the exchange. You can't build empathy unless you acknowledge the distance that exists.
Empathy is made of many gaps that require a continuous flow to turn unique insights into action that deliver impact and nourish the connections. They make empathizing a very ambiguous act, especially when you wander into new and unknown territory.
Empathy is more subtle than obvious. Its many nuances and intricacies make it hard to apply it effectively at scale. But the moment you become aware of the empathy gaps and think about creative ways to reduce them, you begin to form an active experience empathizing with others. It sounds counter-intuitive that gaps are nests for insights.
Figure 2. Empathy gap
You can overcome the distance between you and the customer and mind the blind spots by taking one step at a time, always checking your assumptions to reduce any biases. Tapping into the flow happens when you shift perspectives from you to the customer, the user, and the market to understand the complexity and act with purpose.
#3. Empathy is active.
Knowing that empathy is complex and filled with many gaps is useful but insufficient. We discovered that it is the movement that makes the shape meaningful. As designers and as people, we must know how to work with it not to deform or flatten our insights. Empathy must flow continuously in and out for meaningful exchange between designer and customer to tackle complex needs and deliver sustainable value.
Designing to deliver a long-term impact means solving unmet user needs that are not obvious in the initial framing. Treating empathy as an activity flow can help you go beyond the surface to form those deeper connections and take actions that benefit others. The movement is what transforms insights into action.
Active Empathy
Empathy tools don't always help us become more empathic. While they guide user research, it isn't easy to sustain the empathic insights and carry them out into our work. If the tools don't support the extra dimension of empathy and cater towards its flow, it is hard to overcome barriers and establish more genuine connections with others.
We think creativity is infused by empathy. Every opportunity to create follows from that drive to open new paths into the future while reducing the separation between humans, nature, and narratives.
Our pursuit of overcoming the limitations of existing tools for empathy led us to create Active Empathy.
Figure 3. Active Empathy method
Active Empathy is a collaborative process to design for value and impact, encouraging designers and teams to deepen their connection with customers and the quality of the outcomes. The connection evolves with every step in the process, reducing the gaps to align insights to actions. The result is having a richer perspective of the customer world to build better products and more sustainable innovation.
Active Empathy doesn’t aim to replace existing tools (Customer Persona, Empathy Map Canvas). Instead, it introduces a new process to build empathy as an activity. It’s a more effective route to uncover real customer needs and unique insights you can apply in strategy and product development.
Figure 4. Design activities overview
Empathy is a prerequisite to navigating complexity but working with it is not easy. It’s a big investment of time and resources that can take a toll on you and your team. Active Empathy won’t transform your company overnight. But, if you apply it in key strategic areas of your business such as sales, product, or innovation, the benefits will be felt across multiple areas, helping you live up to high empathic standards:
You will learn to connect better with your customers and partners, directly impacting your sales.
Your teams will gain extra depth of customer insights to navigate the complexity of product development without losing touch on what matters and how to design for impact.
Your organization will create a strong innovation foundation for success led by empathic, creative, and responsible teams.
Link to the podcast episode on empathy.