My life’s mission is to put humanity back into business. As a user experience consultant, guiding technology companies on how to make their products easier and more pleasurable to use, I get to work towards this every day. But I’ve come to realize that user experience is not enough. Designing the product is all for [Keep Reading…]
How We Pose Shapes How We Feel
In all the research I’ve done on empathy, the biggest driver I’ve found of someone’s ability to empathize with others is their own self-awareness. We all know the saying: you can’t love anyone else until you love yourself. Well, it’s true. Empathy starts with self-love. And the road to self-love starts with self-awareness. The funny [Keep Reading…]
The one thing you can do today to make the world a more peaceful place
Whether you work in an organization of 10 or 10,000, there is probably at least one person you’re particularly not fond of. You think they’re loud and opinionated, or lazy and irresponsible, melodramatic or insensitive, too silly or too serious. You avoid them in the hallways and elevators. You cringe when they comment in meetings. [Keep Reading…]
Building Self-Awareness Through Another Person’s Eyes
How well do you see yourself? And how does it compare to how others see you? Skin care company Dove wants you to know that you are more beautiful than you think. According to their research, only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. The other 96% spend so much time focused on [Keep Reading…]
To Those Who Aim to Cause Pain
Today you chose hate instead of hope. You chose to hurt instead of heal. You chose power over patience. You chose judgment over justice. You chose enslavement over enlightenment. You made a choice today. A choice that will forever alter the course of your life and the lives of those around you. The lives of [Keep Reading…]
I’m Going Home
Home. The last year of my life has been an exploration of that word. I came to a point where I finally had to admit that I no longer felt at home, in my home, in my city. And in a search for a new home, I had to admit that I no longer felt [Keep Reading…]
Would You Treat Them Differently?
All of our minds are filled with things that no one else will ever know. “If you could stand in someone else’s shoes, hear what they hear, see what they see, feel what they feel, would you treat them differently?” This is the question asked by the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top hospitals in [Keep Reading…]
Is Empathy “Women’s Work”?
In late 2010, I studied the number of women at high-profile startups, and found that if a startup employed women at all, it was far more often in a “selling” role than in a “making” one. That’s quite a disadvantage for companies whose customer base is primarily women. Despite Etsy’s news last month that they’d [Keep Reading…]
Empathy is the Core of Design Thinking
David Kelley is the founder and chairman of IDEO, probably the world’s best-known design innovation consultancy. Though not quite a household name, Kelley has arguably made as much of an impact on the field of design as the late Steve Jobs — in fact, it was under Kelley’s leadership that IDEO designed the first mouse [Keep Reading…]
Empathy is the Antidote to Shame
shame n. A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. v. To make someone feel ashamed. In her TED talk Listening to Shame, vulnerability researcher Brené Brown exposes the truth about shame: we all feel it. Shame gets in our way. It negatively impacts how we treat [Keep Reading…]
