Empathize Not Sympathize

Many enterprise software vendors sympathize. "We know it's a bad experience" or "We will fix the usability." One of the reasons the software is not usable is because the makers never had any empathy for the end users who would use it. In many cases the makers didn't even know who their end users were; they only knew who would buy the software. As far as enterprise software is concerned people who write checks don't use the software and people who use software don't write checks and have a little or no influence in what gets bought. Though the dynamics are now changing.

Usability is the last step; it's about making software usable for the tasks that it is designed for. It's not useful at all when the software is designed to solve a wrong problem. Perfectly usable software could be completely useless.

It's the job of a product manager, designer, and a developer to assess the end user needs—have empathy for them—and then design software that meets or exceeds their needs in a way that is usable. That way they don't have to sympathize later on.

Design Thinking encourages people to stay in the problem space for a longer duration without jumping to a solution. What problem is being solved—needs—is far more important than how it is solved—usability. Next time you hear someone say software is not usable, ask whether it's the what or how. The how part is relatively easy to fix, what part is not. For fixing the "what" you need to have empathy for your end users and not sympathy.

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