In the last couple of decades, the focus of designing has shifted towards what is known as human-centred designing or design thinking, a process that aims to design products and services by integrating what is desirable from human standpoint with what is technologically feasible and economically viable, and the tool that frames this process is empathy – the ability to see the world through different people’s eyes – see what they see, feel what they feel and experience things as they do. An empathic approach to observation fuels a sense of connection with people and can help uncover their latent needs and desires, something that they otherwise might not be able to articulate as an obvious need, or something that they may not know they need. I’ve seen this a lot with people attempting to read maps in orientation signage at public parks or museums or malls. More often than not, such signs are fixed at places with maps that aren’t ‘heads up’, meaning they do not face the direction that the viewer is facing, making map reading and understanding directions and orientations a complex affair. I’ve seen people standing in front of maps for several minutes, getting confused (humse na ho payega!) and choosing the desi tarqeeb of asking someone for directions or completely misinterpreting the sign and moving in a direction opposite to where they intended to. Making maps – heads up, is a tiny empathetic design effort, but makes a huge difference to the user who is looking to take a quick directional decision based on her reading of the map.

Nursing Scholar, Dr Teresa Wiseman identifies the following attributes of empathy:

1. Taking on someone else’s perspective – when you do this you recognise someone else’s perspective as their truth.

2. Being non-judgmental, as judging another person’s situation amounts to discounting their experience. An emphatic observation will require putting away our own assumptions and biases.

3. Recognising someone else’s emotion. This requires us to be in touch with our own emotions.  

Empathy is about feeling with people, about connecting with them; and in order to connect with people, the designer needs to connect with something within her that knows that feeling.

I have found drama to be a very useful tool in this regard. Please do not mistake drama for theatre. While theatre is a performative experience that performers put together for an audience, drama uses theatre tools to investigate situations and contexts within the make-believe. Drama is a paradoxical approach of deep-diving into the real-world human experiences and feelings through the world of fiction and fantasy – all this by way of an act of non-judgemental collaboration.

At VDIS, we often find ourselves using drama conventions to unpack an essence we wish for a particular user-experience to be centred around. Conventions such as ‘Still Images’ and ‘Directors Sculpt’ help us translate loaded terms such as classic, contemporary, modern, warm and quirky into feelings which inform the kind of individual or collaborative moments-frozen-in-time that we create with our bodies and expressions. The process helps us dig deep into our repertoire of experiences and learnings; it enables us to engage with our collection prior knowledge – something we may not even know we know! The outcome of such a process involves multiple creations leading to multiple observations, multiple reflections and multiple possibilities.  

If designing is a human-centred approach to problem solving, drama is the exploration of everything that is human. It is a safe space to take risks, to practise appreciating multiple perspectives, to practise being non-judgemental, recognising and reflecting on someone else’s feelings, and above all, to look inwards and connect with one’s own feelings.

To all the designers out there, let’s get together and practise some drama; empathy might just find a way to slide in!!