Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Lisa B. Scala

Design is many things. It’s creative, fun, engaging, and different every day. It’s problem solving and visual. It’s often misunderstood by those who haven’t had the opportunity to interact with it. But after a few years in this unpredictable industry, my favorite tool of the trade is hands down not what one might expect. Compassion.

I’ve been fortunate to work with an ever changing landscape of people. No one can claim to have the same background or experiences, and this collection of personalities is what brings ideas and collaboration to the table. Oftentimes, I’ve found that my role at that table is to humble my own experiences and opinions in favor giving those around me the space to speak and be heard. It’s only then that I can take those collective thoughts and feelings to my desk and allow them to come out in my work.

Compassion for the User

A product designer’s number one job role is to place themselves into the user’s footsteps and make the best experience possible for them. Often, the design process begins when a designer gets briefed by the client (internal or external) on the client’s business needs. It’s then the designer’s task to become the liaison from client to user and connect some dots to actually deliver something useful for the end user.

A designer must look at their work with eyes of someone other than themselves, with a different background story, experience level and/or familiarity with whatever it is their looking at. And once that first pass at the design is taken, the next step is to take it another step further and actually test, research and gather feedback without pre-conceived judgements of what that feedback is actually going to be. This strategy of open-minded thinking and feedback gathering is compassion in practice.

Compassion for Your Team

Working in teams alongside others who are thinking, feeling, opinionated beings is hard. What workplaces usually struggle with most is communication, but with great communication and collaboration comes great results.

I’d challenge you to find a person who doesn’t appreciate being asked about their opinion. When working with teammates, I’ve never had a bad reaction from asking someone what their thought process was behind certain decisions, or why they might have done something a certain way, or even how they might tackle a particular solution to a problem. Find ways to present your prioritized goals when working together, and ask questions to see how goals from both sides can come together for an optimal solution. You’d be surprised what new ideas can come out of asking open-ended questions, and often the result is better than you might have originally thought.

Compassion for Your Client

Building client relationships is incredibly important. With increased trust and understanding, motivation and loyalty are built, and difficult conversations and situations become much easier to navigate and handle.

Having worked with many startup ventures and product owners in the consulting space, disappointment is an inevitable trait at times. When clients come to us experienced tech pros with an idea and are quite literally pouring their whole lives into their product solution, expectations can run dangerously high. We’ve all heard the horror stories about injured relationships with clients after finding there’s not a place in a product for a requested element in a design or feature. By approaching that conversation with reassurance and understanding, the receiver of bad news feels less attacked and more heard. Discuss and use reason why you think something may not work or be an optimal solution, and offer alternatives.

By approaching disappointment with compassion, you’ve let that client know you heard their request and are still on their team, going to bat to help them conquer their most important goals. Because you understand the importance of the success of their product, honesty of opinion around strategy and features is incredibly important, even if that means cutting pieces out at times. Compassion in this situation doesn’t mean you’re going to do whatever it takes to make them happy. Compassion means you’ve decided to sit alongside them at the table, on the same team, and help guide them through making the best possible decisions.

In Conclusion

Design is never about the designer. It’s about working with others to find solutions to their problems. It’s only by getting on someone else’s level and experiencing their journey and needs can one create an experience that doesn’t make assumptions. By finding the pain point of others, we as designers can seek to improve our work and have a positive impact on others. It’s our job to listen and observe. Good design is a byproduct of compassionate behavior.

Designing with Compassion was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Designing with Compassion

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