3 Things I Learned from Microsoft’s Student Design Charrette
As part of the winning team in the 2019 student design competition in Seattle, WA during IxDA, I learned a lot about empathy in the short 4 day competition.
After I found out that the theme for Microsoft’s student interaction design competition was “empathy at scale,” I had to apply. It’s an interesting problem, since people often define empathy differently. In terms of the “scale” part of the problem, how do we get people to be empathetic? It came down to, as it often does in design: how do we motivate people to do something that they are not used to doing?
When I found out I was selected as a finalist, I began reading up on concepts in empathy. There were some pretty interesting ideas, both discussed in and out of the IxDA conference. For example, mirror neurons cause us to physically experience another’s pain.
After getting introduced to the problem statement on day one and listening to a panel who spoke about empathy in different contexts, we broke into teams and tried conducting research and ideation. After days of researching, understanding the online space, and talking to people at the conference, our team decided to narrow to empathy in workplace online communication.
Our solution consisted of 5 guidelines for creating more empathy amongst teams who communicate online and may not be co-located. These guidelines came out of lots of literature view and interviews with conference attendees, and we created mockups in different platforms to illustrate them. Three key ideas are shared below!
1. Regain empathy online through restoration, not addition.
We can revive empathy online by restoring rich cues from in person interactions. Emojis are an example of an attempt to bring back some of the cues available in face-to-face interaction. Although they cannot replace body language and other subtle emotional signs, they can help with the issue of clarification of emotion in online spaces.
2. Scale empathy across levels of engagement.
A solution for empathy should support people who often just read on online communities (often referred to as lurkers in online community studies), all the way up to the superstars who want to participate actively. Requiring engagement was disliked by our interviewees, since they valued productivity overall, and wanted the fostering of empathy to seamlessly fit into their workflow.
3. Emphasize commonality —you can build camaraderie by starting from points of similarity.
We often think that in order to build empathy for differences, we must first focus on how we differ. Actually, that can create more of an exacerbated “othering” effect. By emphasizing what you have in common, it builds more empathy.
So….what did we build?
Our solution encompassed all three guidelines above. We mapped the idea of a physical desk— where you can just walk by someone’s desk in the workplace and talk to them or understand their state of mind — to a virtual desk.
Even if you’ve never met Mia in person, you could ask her a question, see basic info such as gender pronouns and name pronunciation, and listen to her voice introduction. When you hover over the profile picture, it turns into a GIF so you can see what Mia looks like when she moves. Statuses are set with bitmojis to resemble Mia more than just the standard icons Slack offers today. The things on the periphery of Mia’s desk are things Mia likes, so a viewer can get an idea of her interests.
We need better stuff, not new stuff.
We wanted to share possible augmentations to existing platforms, not create a new product. Our solution was a set of guidelines because it is often tempting to create flashy products, but in reality, it may just be an adaptable framework that the world needs.
We illustrated our guidelines across all platforms — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Email — to emphasize that our solution is platform-agnostic.
We wanted these to be timeless principles — like Dieter Rams’ guidelines. As Bill Buxton said…
Today, interactions on mobile devices are often still far too complex. Our world is moving towards solutions that scale across time and devices.
-Bill Buxton
All in all, working in a team to deliver a final mockup and concept in 4 days was both one of the most challenging yet also rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. It was an absolute honor to win the competition and surreal to hear that people were wishing the ideas were really implemented (hey Slack, want to hire us?). I also had the opportunity to walk right past Don Norman, meet the founder of UX Collective (thanks for the feedback Fabricio!), and meet design strategist Bill Buxton.
Overall, from this experience, I learned your own unique experiences can trigger empathy for others in analogous or related situations, and the commonality can be powerful. The more unique and colorful experiences you have, the more range of emotion you will be able to relate to. Proof of this is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sensational novel — Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It has been said to have contributed to galvanizing abolitionists and beginning the Civil War. The novel was written by Stowe after she lost her son, and the loss of her son made her realize what new mothers held captive in slavery must feel like after having their children taken from them. Empathy can start revolutions!
Due to the charrette, I will be actively trying to experience different environments and meet people I normally would assume I can’t relate to. I found that empathy begins with the simple admission, “I don’t understand. Can you explain it to me?”
Thank you to the team at Microsoft Design and IxDA!
Keep in touch :)
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