Hey there, my name is Piccia
Neri and I’m wearing a heavy coat inside
because I live in a place where it doesn’t
normally get cold. But today is really cold
and there’s no heating. So here I am, I am a
designer concentrating specifically on user
experience. That is to say, in a very tiny
nutshell, the overall experience impressions
and reactions that customers have to
products and businesses as a whole. When I
first delivered this talk, it came to me
because we were living in extraordinary
times, it was May 2020. And it felt like,
really, it was extraordinary what we were
going through now, quite a few months later,
it still is extraordinary times, it’s still
is testing all of us beyond what we thought
we would be able to endure. So one thing
that’s come out very clearly, and that is
still relevant now as it was back in May, is
that we are all human. And empathy and
emotions are what makes us so. In terms of
business, the businesses that will always do
well usually are the ones that understand
this. So in this talk, I want to show you
how we can all be a better business by using
empathy and emotions the right way. My
mantra is that UX, good UX is good design,
as well as good marketing. And above all,
all of these are good business. So
basically, if you if you use good UX, you
will definitely sell more, your design will
be good. So you will be accessible and the
rest of it, and your business will benefit
from it. So in the context of the extract,
in the context of the extraordinary times
we’re going through this crisis has made
businesses as well as people show their true
colors, because there have been those who
have been incredibly kind to their customers
and employees, offering masks and hand
sanitizers, even sending them in a post
sometimes, and making free home deliveries
and so on. Because putting customers well
being before business interests, usually is
the key to success, and generosity, I am
convinced always pays dividends. We were all
worried, these are scary, scary times. And
we still are, it will be over for sure. But
many of us are scared. And personally, I’m
counting my blessings. Because I think we’re
all very lucky to work in tech, because many
of us actually experienced a surge in
business, which was certainly a relief. Not
all of us. I’m not saying everybody. But all
in all, from what I’ve seen, it’s been a
little bit better for us. In fact, but this
is because another thing that has come out
all of this very clearly is that businesses
that are online will survive this situation.
And that’s no wonder when the very simple
act of going to the supermarket became an
ordeal at some point. And it’s a bit better
now, but not totally, at least not where I
live. And then you get in and this is what
you find and iit’s still happening. This was
a photo from back in April, but is still
happening now whenever a country goes into a
lockdown again. So the consequence to this
dire situation and then really the
repercussions of very much failed in city
centers becoming virtual ghost towns. So the
consequence is that the most
entrepreneurial local businesses have
realized that in order to serve their
customers, they need to go online. Now
during the first lockdown – I live in Spain,
and I was desperate to get some plants for
my terrace and apartment because there was a
was a total lockdown. There was no going out
at all apart from the supermarket and your
nearest pharmacy, they would check if it
wasn’t your nearest pharmacy. So I was
desperate to buy plants online. I was
calling my local nursery where they know me
saying can you, can we arrange something and
they were completely at a loss. Fast forward
a few months later, there are at least five
or six or seven websites like this one in
Spain that sell all the plants that you
could possibly want or the ones that I love
and so on.
But in general, the the shopping experience
nine months into the pandemic is by far
preferable, because also it reduces any
possible risk of contagion. So people have
wised up to that, and they realize they’re
actually – plants at this time in these
Extraordinary times, they might be
actually considered even a, you know,
comfort goods in a way. They certainly were
for me and seeing them grow is a balm to my
soul When every other human contact is so
diminished and reduced – and I haven’t seen
my mother for over a year. The move online
of goods that were previously only ever
bought in store, which was the case for the
nurseries, they were absolutely like “how?
we can never send plants” but in fact you
can, because that’s where you – you go for
the sweet spot of where the customer needs
meet the business needs. And, and that
happens by putting really the customer’s
needs before everything else. And that’s the
sweet spot. The best UX as well as marketing
as well as design, as well as business spot
that there is where the business’s best
interests correspond with a customer’s best
interest. How do you do that? Well, you do
that by, you achieve the sweet spot by
knowing your users, treating them well, and
making them happy, which really is what UX
is truly all about. Because empathy and
emotions are what UX deals with, and UX is
user-centered design. But in fact, I much
prefer to call it Human-Centered Design,
which is when you design putting the humans
that use your products at the center of the
process. Rather than considering considering
them just users, I much prefer to think of
them as, as humans, make them happy, you
increase your own value in a myriad ways.
Not every brand has done this in the latest
nine months. But anyway. So the point that
we need to make sure we all realize us and
our clients is that it’s not about us. It’s
not about what the clients want. It’s about
giving the humans using our products, the
experience that they truly want, rather than
the one we think they should be having. I
have to confess, I’ve been guilty of this
many times, we are often so fixated on what
we want our clients to do, because we think
we know better, that we forget to listen. So
UX, like good business, is about listening,
let’s learn to be a good listener. And
therefore, to understand empathy and
emotions in order to do that. Now the user
experience definition, it’s that it
encompasses all aspects of the end users
interaction with the company, its services
and its products. This is from the Nielsen
Norman Institute, which was founded by Don
Norman, who is responsible for the good bits
of user experience at Apple, I won’t go into
the bad bits. Never mind. So it’s every
single aspect. So it’s every single email or
phone call every social media message, every
sale, absolutely everything. And what’s the
main ingredient of all this? What do your
businesses need both online and off? Well,
it’s really empathy, which is putting
ourselves in our users shoes, reminding
ourselves that users are people looking for
a solution to their problems. And at the
moment, we all need much more understanding
and help than usual, because we may all be
going through challenges that we can’t even
imagine what our neighbour is going through,
you don’t know what’s happened to their
immediate family, and loved ones or friends
is just it all to them. We need to be even
more empathic than usual, if possible, at
the moment. So the dictionary definition of
empathy is the ability to understand and
share the feelings of another. And it’s
important to clarify because there’s another
emotion that’s similar to empathy, and that
people almost all often mistake for empathy,
and it’s sympathy, which is feelings of pity
and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.
But sympathy really is understanding between
people and common feeling. But in Greek, I
won’t go deep into this, but in Greek soom,
“sun” means with, while “em” in empathy
means in. And that is a subtle difference,
but it’s a fundamental one, empathy goes
much deeper than sympathy, sympathy stops at
face value, while empathy dives in. Sympathy
acknowledges. But it doesn’t necessarily
share the suffering. It’s got nothing to do
with that.
You’re not expected to share the problem
with sympathy, you just recognize that there
is one, so you don’t do much to alleviate
the issue. Whereas empathy goes several
steps beyond , way further. Empathy enables
us to understand emotions as well as
practical limitations and frustration,
frustrations. And there’s a very useful
metaphor by Brené Brown, who is I’m sure you
may, may have heard of her. She’s a research
professor at the University of Houston and
she also even has a show on Netflix and
she’s spent her career studying courage,
vulnerability, shame and empathy. And in
order to explain the difference between
sympathy and empathy, Brené Brown says that
sympathy is when you can look at someone in
a hole and say, I’m sorry, you’re in that
hole, it sucks. You acknowledge the
situation. But that’s it, you do nothing
about it. Empathy is like dropping a ladder,
climbing down and being in the hole with
someone, but knowing that you have brought
them the ladder, the ladder so that both of
you can get out, you can watch this on
YouTube, that’s the address. So in real
life, and an example of empathy versus
sympathy is when someone someone is telling
you they can’t go to the shops, and you say,
because they’re an in at-risk category, and
they’re afraid to expose themselves. So you
say, yeah, I’m really sorry for you, I see
the plight, but there’s nothing I can do
about it. Because I can’t go either. I don’t
want to get sick either. And it’s the
computer says no kind of answer. Whereas the
empathic/compassionate response, and we’ll
see what I mean by that is, I’m sorry, you
can go to the shops, I can’t go either. But
my son is going for me, and I’ll get him to
do your shopping too. This is compassionate,
you see that someone is in a difficult
situation, and you show them that you care,
but offering a solution, which is what
empathy does. Empathy finds solutions, what
sympathy usually doesn’t. If you’ve lost
your job, and you go to your landlord and
say, I can’t pay rent, they say, Yeah,
really sorry, terrible, haha, still need
rent. That is not does nothing for them.
Whereas if you can afford it, you, you want
to be compassionate. you cancel rent. That’s
what the empathetic landlord who can afford
to be generous does. They just, he just
cancels rent. So how can we be empathic to
the visitors and users of our web apps,
there’s a – there are a lot a lot of people
still who before this had never really been
online. And now they’re having to rely on
the internet to make their shopping. And
maybe this is what the internet looks like
to them. So it’s very important to make sure
that their options are as clear as possible,
especially in the case of essential kind of
comfort items, such as cheese. And by the by
let’s also be mindful of ourselves. That’s
what Big Orange Heart helps us do. But
because mental health is very important, we
deserve to be nice to ourselves. Just
thought I’d say that. Back to empathy, it is
such a complex and nuanced concept. There
are at least three different types of
empathy. And let’s see which one really
works for us. First of all, there’s
cognitive empathy, the classic put yourself
in someone’s shoes, which is also called
perspective taking or empathy by thought.
But it doesn’t necessarily involve emotions.
And the dark side to it, is this one. So for
instance, Dexter had cognitive empathy,
because that’s what then Daniel Goleman,
who’s the author of a book called emotional
intelligence he offers his children take
when he points out that someone who has the
intention of inflicting pain needs good
working cognitive empathy, to work out how
to best do it, but it doesn’t involve having
any compassion and feelings for them.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t inflict pain. Also
cognitive empathy, as a good side, as we’ll
we’ll see, it can be perceived as being
under-emotional, that’s what a lot of
autistic people have, when they say, I’m not
empathic, but I do understand and I can,
even though I don’t express it, anyway, it
has its place because it’s very useful in
those circumstances, then need logical
thought, more than feelings. So if you’re a
doctor or a paramedic, or a first responder,
you have to adopt it, because otherwise, you
know, nine months into the, into the
pandemic, you won’t, you wouldn’t survive,
you would be completely emotionally
overwhelmed. And that’s when cognitive
empathy is essential.
Otherwise, the other type of empathy, which
the second round, which is emotional empathy
is when you feel the emotions just like a
virus. In fact, it’s also called emotional
contagion, or empathy overload because it
means that we are unable to help it comes
with real risks. When someone needs is
desperate, the last thing they need is to
have someone reacting to their plight. By
being as desperate as they are, I have to
confess that I am a bit like this. But it
doesn’t mean I can be like this. So it
doesn’t, it doesn’t help it because it’s
difficult to help anyone when you’re
overwhelmed by the same emotion, it can be
terribly counterproductive. If you’re a
doctor or nurse, you can’t afford to be
emotionally empathic is just not what you
can do. Now the third kind of empathy, which
is our kind is compassion. Compassionate
empathy is when you feel someone’s pain and
you take action to help such as the ladder
down the hole the brand a brand was talking
about, or organizing gratitude meals for
overworked health workers, rather than just
clapping at 8pm every night or now, at the
moment as it were, actually, BC besieging
hospitals and claiming that the virus is a
hoax. But you know, that’s not going to
that. compassion and empathy is the right
balance between logic and emotion. It’s when
we totally identify with the other person,
but we are able to keep control of our
emotions and use reason to find a solution
to that situation. compassionate empathy is
what we must strive for, when we build
experiences and products. Now, I give you
again, from the Nielsen Norman group, this
diagram, this graph that can help better
visualize the spectrum of empathy. Now, pity
is at the bottom where it deserves to be
because most people don’t even want it, then
sympathy is nice. But as we said, you know,
it doesn’t help that you feel for me unless
you are empathic and you feel with me, but
even so, even though with empathy is where
the good stuff starts to happen, it needs to
be motivated by compassion, which is when I
am moved by you. And I would say that you
should actually be – I am moved to action by
you. How do we put it into practice? What
are the methods to practice empathy, empathy
that are available to us as a web design
business? Well, first of all, build empathy
into your process. And right now, I’m
talking about typography all the time, as
I’m, I’ve got a masterclass on typography is
the first place where you start building
empathy, see how big my slides text is, it’s
as big as possible, because I don’t see well
anymore. But I know there are people that
see even worse than me, and I make
everything as legible as possible. So I
don’t use caps anymore. I only use them in
the top. But for very short sentences and
not essential. Because dyslexic people might
have difficulties in reading caps. If you
have very young designers in your team, they
might privilege smaller text, they might
assume that everybody can read as well as
they can. So make sure that your team
understands that there are assumptions they
can’t make. This is how you build empathy
into your process. And if you’re going to go
want to go deeper, at the basis of good UX,
as well as good business, good marketing,
and good design is user research. And
there’s lots of ways of doing this. I also
have a big UX course. But I go really quite
deep into all this because research is the
most important thing, when you do good
research, you got 50% or more of the job
already done. And you can do it with user
interviews, empathy maps, which is a
specific technique that can be used. And
it’s so enlightening, I love doing that. And
this all leads to user personas. And there’s
also ways of conducting interviews. And
there’s ways also of building your forms, I
did a talk for WordPress London about this,
that is much more empathic and that you may
not have thought about, so get informed
about this. Then the other thing that you
can do is when you test stuff, which I hope
you do, is to recruit diverse test users of
different ages and different cultural
backgrounds. And it’s not that difficult to
do, you can do so online on Facebook groups,
it’s really easy or in you know, possibly,
when we’re still able to go out, ask a local
training center because they have lots of
different people and get creative. I mean, I
used to say “Oh, just go to Starbucks and
ask the person next to you to whether they
understand what your website is about. But
clearly, we can’t do that right now”. So
don’t do that. And then another thing that
you should do is use videos whenever you
can, to work to explain how your product
works.
Because it’s easier or even in a sort of
larger context. If you need to show to your
client that something isn’t working, you
could show them videos of clients unable to
use the product, that really helps. And
lastly, be humble. Learn to welcome
feedback. It’s essential and he takes
nothing from your value or the value of what
you create. Feedback is what will lead you
to a great product instead of a mediocre
one. Now, once we’ve learned to be
empathetic, while also protecting ourselves
from too much emotion, we can leverage that
empathy to evoke and control emotions that
will make our customers truly love us. Now,
I really think that the role that emotional
reactions have in design and marketing is
huge and I keep still learning learning so
much about it all the time. And that’s what
I’m sharing with you. And in recent times
that crucial role of emotions has come to
the fore like never before. We are driven by
our emotions, it’s absolutely clear. And
emotions are very useful because they give
us value and they provide a guiding system,
they make us decide what’s important. So
they go hand in hand, with cognition, our
first react first reaction is always
emotional. That’s what we call the gut
feeling. And without emotion without the the
other emotions fun, pleasure, joy and
excitement and even negative emotions are
very important. Our lives will be fairly
meaningless. Now, I am going to talk to you
about an emotional assessment system called
the three level emotional system that’s
described in a book by Don Norman called
“Emotional design. Why we love or hate
everyday things”. Don Norman had previously
just considered the a more utilitarian side
to design that didn’t take emotions into
consideration. And he corrected that because
they are crucial. Now, so emotions work on
three layers. First of all, there’s the pre
wired layer, the visceral layer, which is
the immediate emotional response, and it’s
unconscious. And it’s what makes us say, I
want it beyond our control, because it’s
beautiful. And we think that is going to
make us look better and beautiful, too. And
we think we’ll be happier in the having of
- The behavioral level is the second
level, and it’s where we learn things, and
we store the learning. And when we can
master something, we’re likely to choose it
because we feel clever when we use it. And
it’s what allows us to perform a skill
without thinking like driving a car, then
the reflective level is the only one that
happens consciously is where we reflect and
analyze the situation where we decide to buy
something because it’s a good rational
choice. And it fits with our self image. I
could talk about this for ages. But I won’t.
Let’s go into into it a bit deeper. Looks do
matter. The visceral level is mostly about
appearance, and I’ll show it to you in just
one image. When I see a fireplace. My
immediate reaction is a visceral one, I find
it beautiful. And that’s a big part of my
reaction. Then I also love the other
feelings it evokes, because I grew up with
stoves and open fires. So this image
conjures up lovely cozy images from my
childhood, and so on. And this emotion is
also the visceral level. Then on the
behavioral level, I am an absolute ninja at
building a fire because after I left home, I
initially lived in a variety of dilapidated
country houses for years. And I can build my
fire in my sleep or hangover, which I
definitely did. And until now all good. But
then the reflective level kicks in. And
that’s when I start remembering the ice
inside the bedroom window, the killer draft
in the corridors, the exhausting chop
logging sessions and the brutal awakenings
when you had to leave the warmth of the
sheets and
face that to get the fire started again,
first thing in the morning. So while
viscerally I would love to live in a house
with open fires again, behaviorally sound
completely equipped to deal with it on the
reflective level, I would not go back to
fires as the only means of heat in a place
with harsh winters, if at all possible.
These are the three levels in one image and
the visceral level, I just want to it’s
important to us as when we design and build
products, because it’s what nature does look
at this. It’s why fruits and flowers are so
appealing to both colors and scent so that
the seeds can be spread. And it’s why some
animals look so magnificent when they want
to attract a mate mate. And that’s why we
groom ourselves and place value generic
periods because attractive things also do
work better. There’s a bunch of studies that
actually proves it. Because this is an
example from the Don Norman book that I
mentioned earlier. Where it’s an experiment
it was carried out in Asia and also other
other continents. They’re designed to ATMs
one, one ugly one, beautiful, with exactly
the same usability that exactly the same
functions. And the overwhelming majority,
almost unanimously, the users declare the
printing machine to be easier to use than
the other. Well, why does good design work
better? Look at this: non-designed things
are usually not just ugly. This is not just
ugly, it’s less accessible and difficult to
use. So as a consequence, visually
displeasing things make us angry, angry and
frustrated. I have not seen the ATMs that
they talked about. I don’t know whether the
ugly one looks like this. So the Emotions
angry and for anger and frustration, make
the cognitive process more difficult. And
that’s why, you know, I advocate good
looking design as well, because it’s
important. We’re also wired to be more
tolerant of pretty things, which is also
famously why the babies of this species are
so cute. Otherwise, it would be utterly
unbearable. As anyone who’s ever tried to
knit in the presence of a kitten can
testify. Also online, it takes a very short
time to form an impression shorter than you
think it’s about 50 milliseconds, let alone
five seconds. So it’s very important that
the first impression works. However, don’t
base everything on just the first
impression. Because otherwise, you may
create a really flashy website such as this
one, I have a video of it, it basically
looks amazing in a you know, cutting a long
story short, but it’s really difficult to
use super slow and not very accessible.
There are so many here, especially on the
websites that celebrate awards for web
design, it’s quite interesting how you see
very beautiful things that don’t work. So
usability has to come first, because then we
move into the behavior, behavioral level,
which is all about us here. Yes, appearance
matters much less than performance. But they
really work together. At the behavioral
level is where we learn how to use things,
we make them work, and we store that
information. And it’s also unconscious. It’s
what makes us possible to perform familiar
tasks without thinking such as driving a
car, as I was saying earlier, or riding a
bicycle or playing an instrument without
reading music. And without conscious
thought. However, even behavioral design and
behavioral the behavioral level includes
physical feel as one of its components,
ecause sensual pleasure is a part of good
sability to my example for this is what
hey’ve done at Duolingo, because it crea
ed a website that is beautiful. So you sati
fy the visceral level. But it also work
really well on the behavioral level. Beca
se using it is so easy that we learn intu
tively how to use it when we interact with
- And it’s an example of an intuitive prod
ct, when the knowledge of the user is
sufficient to perform a task with single
trial learning, you perform a task once and
you know it forever, with no need to go over
it again. However, there is such a thing as
too simple. And that’s the role of the
reflective level, which is the only
conscious level because these were carefully
considered decisions happen. So something
that’s too easy wouldn’t be right. And then
on the reflective level, we get information
from visceral and behavioral combined with
our own knowledge. So we process everything
from the other two levels are in the
reflective level. And it’s a combination of
our knowledge and experiences. And that’s
why brands use celebrities in their
marketing, because they know that on a
reflective level, that particular celebrity
fits with a self image of their customer
avatar, whether you’re a man or a woman,
because if you’re a woman, you might want to
be them. And if you’re if you’re a man, you
might want to be them. And if you’re a
woman, you might want to be with them. So it
just works. And that’s why a successful a
successful product, ideally has to excel on
all three emotional levels, you should get
all the three levels, right? How can we do
that? How is it possible? Yes, it is. So in
the visceral level, you need to make it
evocative, make it beautiful, and make it
right for your audience. That’s something
that will come up again, then, on the second
level, on the behavioral level, you need to
make it accessible, if your audience can’t
use it, they will hate it, it would make
them feel stupid. So it has also to be easy
to use. And again, at the right level,
though, because if you are someone who
learns languages very quickly, Duolingo will
get on your nerves quite soon. So then the
reflective level is where you make it clever
enough that it will it will work for that
audience. So Duolingo point two, sorry, 2.0
I’d say I think you’d call it making the
best choice possible choice and make it
right for for your audience. So you’ve
guessed this, come back comes back again,
your audience Get to know your audience as
much as possible. And that’s why I was
saying earlier about the research. Because
the reality is also that conflict is a part
part of life as we know very well. And real
products provide a continuous set of
conflicts. This is a quote from Don Norman’s
book that I mentioned earlier, and emotion
emotional design. book. And that’s why UX is
an iterative, iterative process. I nearly
said it well the first time. And that’s why
we keep asking and testing and you roll
things out. And if they don’t work as you
thought they should you just keep asking and
find out why. Also, bear in mind that not
everything is measured, measurable. And I
really believe in the importance of emotions
as a piece of qualitative rather than
quantitative data, because it can make a
huge difference to sales. So if someone
doesn’t click on a button, that say, you
know, if you know that 90% of the people
that visit your sales page, don’t click on a
button, you know, that then the numbers you
know the data, but you don’t know why they
do it. And the reason why they don’t click
on that button may well be emotional. So
that’s the role of empathy and emotions in
building a better business to serve our
fellow humans. Again, I really believe that
this is so important these days. And I hope
that you enjoyed this very quick, deep dive
into empathy and emotions. Like I said that
that’s that’s what I do. I talk to people
and teach people these things. If you’re
interested, I don’t have I have a big course
of this, but it’s not available right now.
But in the meantime, if you would like to
learn how to start implementing a UX
process, you can start with this UX mini
course, which is called UX Made Easy, which
is sort of soft and very affordable
entrance, practical introduction to UX. You
can go to design for geeks dot com and go
to the Courses tab under learn, and you’ll fi nd it.
It’s my mission to show anyone
who builds websites and products that a user
centered approach is not only possible, it ‘s
really the only possible one. Thank you
so much for having me. Another place that
you can go to if you want to continue
he conversation is my facebook group Design
for Geeks. Thank you so much. Stay safe
stay healthy. Bye