Designing with Empathy

Every decision we make affects the way real people experience our products. In this session from beyond tellerrand 2013, Aaron Gustafson, author of Adaptive Web Design, points out that even designers who believe in user-centered design often fall back on their own biases and instincts when deciding how people will experience content and services.

The result is decisions made for “users”, an anonymous and faceless crowd, rather than an effort to understand the perspectives, surroundings, capabilities and disadvantages of the actual people a product is meant to serve. Aaron explores why empathy matters, how it empowers creativity, and how designers as a community can inject more of it into their work.