it's pretty well known at this point that cars have notoriously bad user interface design i
mean just in my car i've got these buttons that aren't really buttons i have a button that says
cruise on the steering wheel which would suggest cruise control but i've never managed to get it
to work i've got this thing i don't know what that is. To change the time on the clock i have
to use these buttons that are completely out of reach even for me and i've got pretty long arms,
I even get people waiting for me to let them into the back of my car because they can't
see the door handle which is over here. Now i'm sure we can all think of things that we use on
a regular basis that are just badly designed or frustrating to use i asked about this on twitter
and i got responses from right-handed items, the imperial system, toasters that don't fit bread,
the apple magic mouse, window blinds, usb cables, all kinds of things so in today's video i'm going
to be talking about a thing called empathetic design and the lessons that we can learn from
these frustrating things that we use and how we can apply that to the things that we create.
Today's video is sponsored by skillshare. Skillshare has an online learning community
for creatives where millions come together to take the next step in their creative journey.
There are classes on there for everyone from beginners to pros covering video design
marketing even productivity when i was working as a full-time designer i did this class by Courtney
Elicio called beyond the logo crafting a brand identity and i've used the techniques from that
class in basically every branding project i've done since then so if you're interested the first
1000 people who click the link in the description will get a free trial of skillshare premium
and after that trial the yearly membership is less than ten dollars a month - thanks skillshare!
On july the 1st 1874 Remington released the Sholes and Glidden typewriter this was probably
the earliest example of the qwerty keyboard layout that we still use today. designed by Christopher
Latham Sholes this keyboard layout was designed to prevent jams in the keys of the typewriter
by separating out commonly used pairings such as st there's been minor adjustments over the
years but this keyboard layout has long outlived the typewriter it made its way onto computers and
later into our smartphone screens. We're used to it by now but it's easy to see how somebody could
be confused if they're seeing this keyboard layout for the first time in fact there's a
whole department at google right now working on exactly these kinds of problems. There's a
group focused on the next billion users and it's looking at how to design features and products
for users from developing nations who will begin internet access for the first time. It's
looking at ways that we can design for global accessibility how can we cater for different
languages and input styles how can we scan foreign language documents and use audio tools to convert
speech to text in the native language. The thing is there's so many things that we get used to
that just don't make sense for a lot of people and this is where empathetic design comes in.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another and this is an important
part of creating things that are to be used and experienced by other people. It's about trying
to put ourselves in the shoes of the audience and to see things from their point of view. There's a
scientist called don norman and in his 2004 book emotional design why we love or hate everyday
things, he suggests that there are three levels to design number one is visceral this is our initial
reaction to something it's the immediate response to the sensory factors such as sight and touch
our kind of instinctual decision. Number two is behavioral this is how well does this thing work.
Number three is reflective this is after we've interacted with this thing we start to take a
step back and think about its overall significance and its usefulness and appeal to our lives and
to other people. I think a lot of the time as artists and creators we're focused on the first
one the visceral reaction we're thinking about the aesthetics, does it look good, does it sound good,
is it on trend but we often neglect the behavioral and even the reflective side of things like
how well does this thing actually work does it serve the purpose that it was created for. You
may have heard the phrase form follows function and this is absolutely true like the form of
the thing that we create i.e the shape the color the size should follow after and serve
the function of the thing that we create. So my encouragement and challenge to you guys as
artists and creators is how often do we think about the function of the thing that we create.
There's an agency called IDEO and their chief creative officer Paul Bennett says this
the best thing you have as a designer are your eyes and ears you drop your ego and you go out
into the world with an open mind this is so crucial for creative people you know we spend a
lot of time in our own head and particularly when it comes to creating art we're finding ways to
express ourselves and the things that we're feeling but it's important that we also keep
our eyes and ears open to the world around us and the needs of people around us. One of the things
that the team at google found was that there are some interactions which are incredibly intuitive
one of those is photos and the way that we can pinch to zoom we can move things around. This
just feels very human these simple interactions of just push and pull things like this are the reason
we see those videos of like babies being able to use ipads and look at photos. These are actions
that just come naturally to us and don't need much explanation. You see by observing people using the
things that we create you get to see the things that are really working and really intuitive
and the things that just add unnecessary complexity. Or here's a more personal example,
when me and the guys from rivers and robots were going on tour we created a bunch of tour
visuals right we had this projection system and we designed all these visuals to go with every song
and we decided that this would be the kind of stage setup and that if we went to a venue and
they had like a separate screen somewhere then we could use that to present lyrics and people could
see the words over there and to be honest this worked pretty well it looked pretty cool we did
most of our european tour this way but we did find there were some venues where there wasn't a second
screen available or there was only space just to have the projection and it wasn't until we played
a concert in singapore where the guys there had this system where they could add the lyrics from
their software on top of our visuals in the same screen. Straight away we noticed something that
a lot more people were singing the words of the songs when the lyrics were incorporated into the
visuals that were happening on stage and so after that we came home and we completely edited all of
our visuals and we put the words of the songs in the visuals and every tour day after that we
noticed more people singing along to the songs. Just a simple thing of adding lyrics. In one of
my recent worship sessions I uploaded to youtube i took some extra time after uploading it to just
go through and add all of the lyrics to the songs in the captions and I did this thinking of people
who might be hard of hearing but what i actually found is that I was getting lots of comments from
people who english wasn't their first language and i didn't realize how much it helps those people to
be able to hear the lyrics and engage with what's going on. You see when we design something in an
empathetic way we end up creating something that serves more people than we realized. Google's
research in countries like brazil and india found that there was a real need to help people clear
up space on their phones and they created this service called google files which was then widely
adopted all around the world. Roman Mars says this designing for people with extreme use cases
creates products that can be easier to use more simple and have greater utility for everyone but
it also has significant moral value meeting people where they are and serving them is enough of a
virtue in and of itself. And this is absolutely true just taking time to practice empathy to
think about the people on the other side of the thing that you create. One, it will end up helping
more people than you realize and two, it's just a good thing to do. So how do we apply this? Well
firstly it starts with opening our eyes and ears to the world around us maybe take some time to
show the things that you make to other people show it to your parents or your grandparents or little
kids and watch the way that they interact with the thing that you've created and let's really
listen to the things that people say about the things that we create it might just be that they
notice something that we've kind of got used to like the terrible interfaces on our cars.
Whoa my face has gone like so bright this sky is amazing look at that it's beautiful!