Creating digital products & services that people love requires a solid understanding of their motivations, habits, and behaviors. The most successful companies instill human-centered design principles and user empathy as pillars of their product creation cycle, ensuring their product or service solves the problems of those who are using it. To put it simply, you need to have empathy for where the users are and what they are going through. Otherwise, you run the risk of creating a very expensive solution for a problem that doesn’t actually exist.
If empathy for the end user is important to project success, I would argue that empathy for those on your team is equally, if not more important. Taking the time to understand the underlying factors behind the decisions and actions of your team, is paramount to your individual sanity and the success of the group.
This sounds good in theory, but how can you put it into practice when creating real products with real people and real deadlines? This talk will explore examples and practical communication solutions from a recently completed app redesign for a well-known music festival. I’ll dive into the challenges we faced, who was involved, and most importantly how the team members collaborated to come to a resolution. You’ll leave equipped with practical methods to apply the empathy usually reserved for the users of your products to the team that creates them.
Paul Demers – Cantina
