Here’s an embarrassing story, but I hope it helps make my point about being empathetic.
Of all the traits and characteristics of Design Thinking, the one most necessary component for any designer to demonstrate is empathy.
My first design teacher Anna drilled this idea into my head.
“As a designer,” she said, “Your opinion is irrelevant. The only opinion you want is from the person you’re designing for.”
To be empathetic, she explained, required the designer to focus entirely on the end user. She went so far to say that we rarely – if ever – spoke in sentences in exploratory meetings. We were only allowed to ask questions … and then listen.
Questions aside, listening is where a designer truly becomes empathetic. To listen well, she said, meant you must do a few things:
- Forget what you know. You are not the expert.
- Stop listening to yourself..
- Have all your questions written out in advance. If you’re thinking of the next question, you’re not listening to the other party.
Lessons lost, then learnt again
Did I remember those quotes when I started my career? God no.
Like everyone at my first agency, and the next and the next, we all drank the Kool-Aid and fell into the lazy marketing trap of believing our job was to make people want things.
Being empathetic with what they wanted? Never entered my mind.
My own Eureka moment came when a global cosmetics brand asked for my help.
Would I travel to China for a month to learn how to help them sell black hair dye to Chinese women?
I thought I’d reached Nirvana. As I jetted out of New York, I thought: How hard could this be?
Then, I stepped foot into a beauty parlour in Shanghai.
Through my lovely interpreter Daisy (bless her heart), I made my first error with some off-hand comment to a lovely woman in her mid 50s about dying her hair black. I said something insightful like, “Oh, you’re dying your hair black.”
“Which colour black?” she asked. I blinked.
“There’s not just black,” she said. “There’s shiny black, there’s matte black, black black, brown-black, blue-black … “
Instantly I realised I was in over my head.
“Your hair looks lovely,” I said to another woman who came out from a hairdryer. “You must be pleased.”
“Pleased?” she shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
How could you not know, I thought. There’s a mirror right there.
“I haven’t asked my husband what he thinks,” she said, turning on her heel.
Things continued to go from bad to worse. One woman wanted to know why the client was using models from Hong Kong in ads placed in Shanghai. When I asked another woman if she ever considered dying her hair at home, she – and everyone else, it seemed – burst out laughing.
Daisy pulled me aside, suggesting we go for a coffee. At a nearby café, she looked at pitiful me and said, “May I explain some information which may be helpful to you?”
A second chance to start again
For the next hour, she explained to me with tremendous patience everything I should have learnt before I left the US.
She explained to me the catastrophic damage of Cultural Revolution, which I knew of – but hadn’t put into context for my visit. She spoke of the Great Reform leading to the opening up of China to the West. Most relevant, she explained what the woman in the salon had gone through from a personal standpoint. She ended by explaining how these women, after enduring the overwhelming hardship for her and her family, slowly but eventually at last had a home she could be proud.
As she brought the story to a close, Daisy said, “After everything these women went through, why would any of them want to dye their hair at home, potentially staining her fresh benchtop or the beautiful stainless sink or her pleasing new towels?”
Daisy giggled. “Besides, it’d take away the best part of their week,” she said.
I didn’t understand.
“Being able to go the salon, to be primped, to laugh with her girlfriends,” she said, and with more giggles. “And to make quiet fun of their husbands.”
Every single lesson from Anna I’d forgot due to the aggressive non-empathetic marketing of (some of) my clients came flooding back to me. That night in the hotel, I did everything I should have.
- I thought of every question I wanted to ask, making sure it was open-ended to allow the women to tell me their thoughts and opinions, not re-inforce what I knew or wanted to hear.
- I had a marvellous woman in the hotel business centre help me phrase the questions respectfully. She even taught me a few words in Shanghainese (not in Mandarin) to again, show my respect.
- Most hilarious (to me, anyway), I had the concierge find me an open store where I bought my client’s product and I tried to dye my hair that night in the hotel bathroom. It didn’t go well, but it – plus everything else – taught me a lot.
You are the least important person in every conversation
Without exaggeration, the next few days were the most eye-opening and lesson-searing days I’ve ever had in my career.
When I learnt to start listening and stop thinking I knew everything, I am convinced I heard more.
What a surprise, the more respectful I was, the more information I got.
When they could see I was interested in them, not me or my client, they helped me in return. Many asked their friends to talk to me as well.
By the last few days, moving from Shanghai to Beijing, a few women became to spontaneously brainstorm with me how my client should market hair dye in China.
Sell it directly to the best salons, they said.
Give the salon owners quality marketing materials to retain their best customers and attract new ones.
Train the owners in Western dying and styling techniques.
Teach the salon owners to be better business owners in workshops run by both international and local trainers together.
I left China after 30 days with a brilliant campaign. And most amazing, they did all the work. I just listened.
When I presented my ideas to the head of marketing, his response – nice but curt – was “Well, I think we know better than they do about how to sell black hair dye in China.”
That, my friends, is part of the bigger story of when I decided to leave the US and move to Asia.
Anyway, back to my story.
I remember packing up my apartment in Manhattan, and I came across an old presentation from early in my career.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, I read a statement that completely reflects Design Thinking.
It read:
Rather than 'making people want things,' try 'making things people want.'
That’s how to be empathetic in Design Thinking.
A few final thoughts.
- Leave behind your assumptions of what you think you know
- Go into the situation and tell yourself it’s OK to not know everything or to be the smartest person in the room …
- ,,, but you’d better have good intelligent questions ready to go
- Put away your corporate-speak messages
- Look past the biased research and discuss the issues with real people
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