Empathy Expansion Kit: Empathetic User-Centric Products and Services

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to our snack size edition of the Empathy Expansion Kit.
Today, we are focusing on empathy and design. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:30)
Hello, everyone.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:32)
Tullio, bringing empathy to complexity is really key here with empathy and design. Let's dive into it.
So why not just design something the way I think it should be designed and just throw it out there?

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:47)
Well, that's kind of the way it used to be and many companies still do it that way. It's what I call the visceral gut feeling, right? I've been in this industry, in this space, my whole career, I know it in and out. I've been talking to clients and customers, I know exactly what they want, and here's what we should do. It's the build in and they will come mindset. And there's some success to that based on that because it is informed on some level, on a personal level, but it's a representational one. So you're kind of hoping that every single one of your customers thinks the way you do. So if you want to take a more scientific approach, one that not only has some methodology to validate whether you have the right approach, but one that's deeply rooted in empathy, then you improve your chances of expanding the scope of your product or services beyond that one individual who's trying to create something that is good for them. And so there's five stages that I like that are part of design thinking, the traditional design thinking, but I've expanded them to seven and I'm not the only one. A lot of people have done the same thing. And the first stage of that is really like to be curious.
First, be curious with what is it that you're solving.
Fall in love with the problem.
We rush to fall in love with the solution, but the mindset needs to be more fall in love with the problem. What is the problem you're trying to solve? Love the problem, right? And then through that, you can take different steps, which is to understand how that problem impacts individuals and organizations and even society at large. So to do that, you have to go and speak to people. And you have to do research and get input and listen, be curious and listen to learn about what people are saying. And dig into more than just the transactional layer, right?
Understand the emotional ramification behind someone trying to fulfill a need.
You know, it's as simple as I need a doctor, right?
Because I need to take care of something that I have an illness, I need a doctor. It's a transaction. I need a doctor, I have an illness, right? Or I need someone who's going to make me feel better, who's going to help me feel better. I need to feel better. So understanding those two, if you're building a service or an offering, is critical because one, it's transactional. I can help you find a doctor to fulfill a problem, or I can sympathize and empathize with you about what the problem is. What you really want is to feel healthy, to be happy, to not have to worry, to not have anxiety. And then how I position that product, which is still the same product and offering, makes a huge difference because I am positioning in a way that treats not only the problem, but also fulfills your need to feel better, to not have anxiety. So understanding, empathizing throughout process, then defining how you are going to solve that problem, which is really about what's the transactional need, but also what is the intrinsic emotional need that you are fulfilling.
Going through a process of ideating on how to solve that, so you come up with some different ways and ideas of how we can approach this, and then you prototype those ideas. In some cases, it's literally a physical prototype that you go on and validate, possibly with the same people that gave you the feedback to begin with, or it could be an approach over an offering if it's a service-oriented business. And again, you're prototyping, testing out how people would respond in a real way, and that test is not rushed. You want to really get more feedback too.
So you go back with something, you test it, it validates the input you got. But then, you know, when the rubber meets the road, people change their thoughts too. It's like, I thought I wanted it that way. It's like when you're building a house and you see all the pictures, and then the architect and the contractor starts building it. And then in real life, once you see the walls up and things, you're like, yeah, I think I want that wall over here, right? So you start changing things because when the reality is in front of you, your perception is different, so you start to change it. So in the process of testing these prototypes, when you get the real feedback of, I thought I wanted it that way, but this is actually what feels right to me. So you got to listen to those. And then it's about implementing and launching something that's a scale. And that's an iterative process. You don't just do that once. It's a continuous process. And that's the key thing. And all that's tied into empathy because you really just care enough that you want to provide a valuable service and a valuable experience.