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Design Without Empathizing is possible, but it often results in ineffective and disconnected solutions. Empathy is the core of user-centered design, allowing designers to truly understand user needs, emotions, and pain points. Without it, designs are based on assumptions rather than real problems, leading to poor user experience and low engagement. While technical skills and creativity are important, true innovation comes from deeply understanding users. An empathy-driven approach ensures meaningful, accessible, and intuitive designs that enhance user satisfaction and retention. Ultimately, Design Without Empathizing means creating without purpose.
Empathy in Design Thinking
The term ‘understand’ is often seen as shallow in practice, whereas ‘empathy’ goes deeper, involving a multi-layered and nuanced perspective of human experiences. Don Norman, a pioneer in the industry, introduced the concept of empathy to large-scale entrepreneurs, which later became a foundational element of Design Thinking, institutionalized by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. By definition, empathy is the capacity to share and comprehend another’s emotions or state of mind. It is often described as the ability to “put oneself in another’s shoes” and experience their perspective or emotions firsthand. However, Design Without Empathizing overlooks this critical aspect, leading to solutions that lack true user connection and fail to address real needs effectively.
Empathy in design starts with asking ‘WHY.’ Researchers and designers conduct workshops with clients and study users to uncover hidden needs and challenges—insights that stakeholders may not have initially articulated. As a crucial people skill, empathy helps in understanding how stakeholders and users perceive problems within a specific context, how they feel about them, and how they react in different situations.
Various product development methods—Agile, Lean Startup, Waterfall, Scrum—offer different approaches to gathering requirements. However, the Morhover team strongly believes in Human-Centered Design (HCD) Thinking, where empathizing with users and stakeholders is key to solving problems effectively. On the other hand, Design Without Empathizing risks overlooking critical user needs, leading to ineffective solutions that fail to create meaningful impact.
To practice empathy or not?
The buzzword ‘empathy’ has been a hot topic in the design industry for quite some time, often seen as a fundamental requirement for designers. However, when Don Norman published his article “Why I Don’t Believe in Empathic Design”, it sparked widespread debate—especially since he was the one who originally introduced the concept. In this blog, we reflect on Don Norman’s perspective, breaking down his arguments to understand the evolving role of empathy in today’s design landscape. More importantly, we explore whether Design Without Empathizing is truly viable or if empathy remains an essential pillar of effective design.
In his article, Don Norman states that he doesn’t believe in empathetic design anymore. He illustrates his argument by pointing out that designers in Bangalore do not necessarily understand the users in Rural India any more than designers in the San Francisco Bay. Our experience with designing in India would seem to validate his argument as well.
He says that he doesn’t believe in empathetic design anymore because he feels it is not useful to understand every individual’s personality while creating a product that has a large number of users.
Before diving deeper into this article, let’s take a moment to explore how design operates within different contexts. In his seminal paper “Design Research and the New Learning”, Richard Buchanan explains that the approach to design varies depending on the context. This highlights the importance of adaptability in the design process. However, when considering Design Without Empathizing, we must question whether a context-driven approach alone is enough or if empathy remains a crucial element in creating truly user-centric solutions.
The diagram above illustrates the different concerns that design aims to address from an outcome-driven perspective. The first order of design (lower level) focuses on communication through symbols and images. The second order involves designing artifacts, including engineering, architecture, and mass production. The third order shifts toward designing interactions, encompassing processes, activities, or any form of user engagement.
Finally, the fourth order of design is about shaping environments and systems that integrate all previous design levels. However, when considering Design Without Empathizing, we must question whether these orders alone can create meaningful user experiences or if empathy remains essential for truly impactful design solutions.
WHY IS THIS DIAGRAM RELEVANT TO ARTICLE?
“In my current work, I’m trying to look at different kinds of problems — the major issues that societies are facing in the world, like hunger, education, health, and security.”
This is one statement we wish Norman had elaborated on further in his article. Here, he refers to the context he is designing for—the social transformation design context. This directly relates to the fourth order of design, as illustrated in the diagram above. However, when considering Design Without Empathizing, it raises the question of whether social transformation can be effectively achieved without deeply understanding users and their evolving needs.
There are fundamental differences in designing for the fourth-order (Social transformation) and designing for the third-order (Product design). Let’s try and understand these differences:
Societal Context
He states, “We’re proposing to combine experts and community workers. Instead of simply recommending solutions, experts should act as facilitators, guides, and mentors. We need an approach that blends top-down expert knowledge with bottom-up insights from the community. This method must adapt to different communities worldwide.” However, this approach raises a critical question—can Design Without Empathizing truly bridge the gap between expert-driven solutions and real community needs? Without empathy, the risk of disconnected and ineffective designs increases, making user-centered innovation
Designing for social transformation demands a blend of expert knowledge in design and community knowledge, as solutions must be robust and capable of evolving organically. In this context, designers must acknowledge their role as external agents and adapt accordingly. Traditional human-centered design processes can often be too intrusive or simplistic to address large-scale social challenges. Instead of being direct solution providers, designers act as catalysts—guiding and facilitating change rather than dictating outcomes. However, attempting Design Without Empathizing in such scenarios risks creating disconnected solutions that fail to resonate with real community needs, ultimately hindering meaningful transformation.
Product Context
A product solves a problem that is specific to the needs of the users. The features are packaged in a way that caters to a specific issue. Addressing these issues needs an empathetic mindset to understand the challenges faced by the target users and their motivations.
As Don Norman stated, “The Human-Centered Design (HCD) approach works well in a product context because it focuses on identifying real issues and needs within a specific target segment.” Practicing empathy allows designers to understand users’ likes and dislikes, enabling them to tailor products that truly meet their needs. However, attempting Design Without Empathizing risks creating products that lack user connection, leading to ineffective solutions that fail to address real problems.
In product design, various methods and techniques help in practicing empathy. Research approaches like shadowing, interviews, and focus groups allow designers to understand users’ psyche, habits, and behaviors. These methods are applied based on the context and research objectives to uncover real user needs. However, attempting Design Without Empathizing eliminates these valuable insights, leading to solutions that may miss the mark in addressing user expectations and pain points.
- These research methods play a huge role in finding behavioral patterns of people, which can also help in addressing how do they perceive a particular problem and react towards it.
- The data gathered is identified & visualized into different patterns of information. These patterns help us to create personas and target segments that further define the requirements of the product.
- In the process of identifying patterns, there are chances that we come across exceptions. The identified patterns and exceptions together may help in arriving at insights to be used for designing the product.
Conclusion
We hope this piece has helped clarify the discussions surrounding Don Norman’s perspective and provided deeper insights. However, we’d like to leave you with a thought—while empathy is often seen as essential, it is also incredibly difficult to practice fully. No one can ever truly experience another person’s distress in its entirety. Instead, we believe in compassionate design—an approach that allows designers to feel for others with the genuine intention to help. That said, can Design Without Empathizing ever truly create meaningful and impactful solutions, or does compassion remain the key to designing with purpose.