Empathy enables us to feel other people’s emotions while being detached from the situation, which helps us to see things more clearly. Empathy is a useful concept for solving problems and imagining the most creative business ideas.
One approach we use at Triode is Design Thinking, where “Design Thinkers” try to understand who your customers are and what they want, in order to produce a product or service that is really useful to them.
For example, 20 years ago, it was common for social service experts to design programs they “thought were necessary” for the system, without necessarily validating the relevance of these programs. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that the programs didn’t correspond to the needs of the clientele, so they fell by the wayside. In the United States, Design Thinking (and empathy) is used to design programs that actually meet the needs of the population they serve.
Empathy is especially important when thinking about healthcare design. Medical services can be frightening and make patients anxious. So it’s imperative that understanding patients’ fears and needs underpins the design for medical devices, clinics, services and so on. Empathy is not just limited to customers (i.e. patients), but also serves medical staff, including doctors, nurses and medical secretaries. When their work is more harmonious, patients and the system as a whole benefit.
At Triode, empathy with others begins with the simplest of concepts: conversation. By discussing problems and needs with business leaders, employees from different departments, current and potential customers, all can, contribute to an understanding of what kind of product or service is really needed. The Mayo Clinic spoke with patients and doctors about the clinical experience and redesigned their examination rooms entirely, to include separate spaces for examinations and consultations.
Once the various needs have been described, the next step in Design Thinking is the product strategy, which aims to solve as many questions as possible with an innovative product or service. Once the objectives have been defined, it’s time to think of different concepts (ideation) and test them in order to evaluate them.
Empathy is crucial to any innovation process. It influences product strategy and enables more informed decisions to be made downstream in product or service development. In short, empathy greatly enhances the customer experience and leads to higher margins.
Patrick Sirois
psirois@triode.ca
At Triode we work closely with your team to help you define your product strategy, with a particular focus on reducing the risks associated with innovation in unique and often highly regulated environments.
