{"id":798,"date":"2026-08-31T18:30:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/?p=798"},"modified":"2026-09-30T22:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:12:19","slug":"dark-side-of-empathizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/dark-side-of-empathizing\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Side of Empathizing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Can empathizing reduce co-creation in the design process?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Service design projects carry businesses through a problem-solving process rooted in design thinking \u2014 a five-stage process comprising discovering the problem space, defining the problem, ideation, prototyping and testing solutions, and finally implementation. This process isn\u2019t run through just once, but repeated multiple times, and as quickly as possible, in order to reach the best possible outcome. But to get through the first stage \u2014 to more precisely discover the space in which the problem occurs \u2014 the designer must identify the key stakeholders of a problem and be able to describe the problem space from their point of view. To do this, the designer must be skilled at empathizing. This emphasis on empathy is one of the features that sets service design apart from other organizational problem-solving methods. Among designers, there\u2019s a well-known saying that without learning what the stakeholders of a problem are actually experiencing, service design work will never reach its real goal: creating a genuinely functional, novel solution for those stakeholders. At the same time, arriving at this understanding is a winding road, and the designer spends a large share of the service design process practicing this empathy in order to form as accurate a picture as possible of the stakeholders\u2019 world and their needs. But for all the benefits that gaining this understanding and skill in empathizing brings to the designer and to the problem-solving process, it can sometimes itself become a point of harm \u2014 both for the designer and for the solution. But how is that possible? In this piece, you\u2019ll see a picture of what this empathizing looks like, as well as an analysis of how its effects can sometimes be negative.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the food court floor of the mall, the three of us are sitting on one side of a large wooden table. Behind us is a wall, and in front of us we can see part of the space with its restaurants and their customers. The sound of music, kitchen equipment, and customers talking to one another all mix together, but at this hour \u2014 late morning, close to noon \u2014 this floor isn\u2019t so crowded that the three of us can\u2019t hear each other. Melika and Ehsan have arranged to work together today on a few tasks for a project, and they\u2019ve chosen this place because it\u2019s convenient for both of them to reach. They\u2019re sitting next to each other, and I\u2019m sitting next to Melika. Both of them have their laptops open, and on both screens they\u2019re looking at the same file. The file in question is an online questionnaire under design, meant to be answered by the target audience of a service design project. The day before, they drafted the questions, and today it\u2019s time to rewrite them so they\u2019re understandable to the respondents.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Dark<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The questionnaire has close to 20 questions, and it\u2019s meant to stay that number. If the questions grow too many, the respondent might lose patience and abandon the survey halfway through. The questions are also meant to gather information about the working circumstances of a number of the mall\u2019s shopkeepers \u2014 meaning the content itself isn\u2019t very complex. But rewriting even this many questions for a simple questionnaire is work that started at 10:45 and continues until 12:45, and even then remains unfinished, to be picked up later when Melika has time to make the tone of the questions consistent. Counting the time spent before this session and what will be spent after, a full working day is needed for this task. That\u2019s because two service designers are writing this questionnaire, and at every step, with every sentence and every option they write, they\u2019re thinking about how shopkeepers from this particular trade will experience the questionnaire. They keep pausing and testing their work to check whether respondents will easily understand the intent of each question: \u201cLast time one of the shopkeepers said we don\u2019t have \u2018users\u2019!\u201d \u2014 whether the questions are close to the shopkeepers\u2019 own vocabulary: \u201cDo they call it a \u2018strip\u2019 themselves?\u201d \u2014 whether, when answering on their phones, respondents can easily see the question and its options at a glance: \u201cIt shows these stacked on top of each other on mobile, isn\u2019t that too much? Does it scroll all the way down?\u201d \u2014 whether to avoid adding another question that would make it too long: \u201cWe can\u2019t split this into two questions, because they\u2019re hard to reach and we want them to answer this, and we only get one chance to get them to fill it out\u201d \u2014 and, in short, whether every single detail that a respondent will only spend five minutes dealing with is in its right place. Partway through designing the questionnaire, the two of them are so meticulous about wording the questions \u2014 sometimes falling into long pauses and silences \u2014 that it occurs to me to suggest that if they\u2019re still unsure whether a question or its options work, they could resolve that uncertainty by testing the questionnaire on one or two shopkeepers they have an easier rapport with, before distributing it to all the shopkeepers. Melika welcomes the suggestion, and it speeds things up a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the questionnaire work is done, it\u2019s time to enter the answers from a number of interviews they\u2019ve conducted with some of the shopkeepers. The file changes. Now both of them are looking at the same online spreadsheet file. Melika explains to me how they go about this work: \u201cWe put the interview results in a Google Sheet so that, first, we ourselves understand what we\u2019ve entered; second, Mr. Naseri [the client\u2019s contact person and project manager] understands what we\u2019ve written; and third, if someone later wants to do an interview and enter it, they\u2019ll understand how it\u2019s done too.\u201d In other words, now they have to think about the experience of their colleagues who will later see this file. The two of them check whether they\u2019ve chosen suitable headings, and whether each heading conveys what the answers under it actually meant. The columns aren\u2019t titled based on the wording of the questions, but based on categories Melika has drawn out from the answers themselves. Melika explains this logic to Ehsan, and Ehsan asks questions to understand it better \u2014 for instance, one column is labeled \u201cUnit Initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Ehsan: Like, in some of your interviews did you ask what initiatives they\u2019d taken?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Melika: No. From what they said, I understood that, say, such-and-such unit did this or that to sell better.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    After checking the headings \u2014 finishing up with a few corrections \u2014 it\u2019s time to check the order of the columns, and once that\u2019s done too, they decide to enter one of the 25 interviews that need to be entered together, so that later, when they\u2019re each entering the rest of the interviews on their own, they\u2019ll go about it in a similar way. When they go to enter what was said, the data entry can\u2019t follow the order of the columns; instead, they enter the data based on whatever the interviewee happened to talk about first, since the interview was semi-structured and the respondent was free in how they answered. As they enter the interview information, the two of them consult each other about which column heading a given thing the interviewee said best relates to, and then consult about how to enter the answer in a way that stays faithful to the quote \u2014 entering more or less the exact sentence the interviewee said. And once again, the next challenge in entering the data is making sure the sentences are recorded in a way that lets others easily understand what the point actually was, without picking up a different meaning. In a sense, they are organizational translators: people who have understood the language of the trade\u2019s members and are trying to phrase the findings in a way that\u2019s easy for designers who never met the respondents directly to understand, while still conveying the meaning accurately.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Dark<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    The fact that the interviewee raised a different category every few sentences, and the matching column heading had to be found each time, means Melika is constantly moving back and forth between columns. Watching this back-and-forth between so many columns \u2014 which by a rough estimate number around 50 \u2014 is frustrating even for me as an observer; I don\u2019t know about Melika, but I admire her patience. The interviews, which took an average of 45 minutes each, take roughly the same amount of time again just to get their results entered into the table. Looking at the column headings, I can also make out traces of other stakeholders:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • Challenge with the mall\u2019s management<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Challenge with other tenants<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Most important factor behind lack of business<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Strengths and unique features of the mall<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Competing markets, from the tenant\u2019s point of view<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Successful strategies of the mall<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Unsuccessful strategy of the mall<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Customer personas<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • And so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      In their effort to uncover what goes on in the shopkeepers\u2019 world, the designers have also been thinking about other people who weren\u2019t present during the interview but who played a role in shaping the shopkeeper\u2019s experience: competitors, the mall\u2019s manager, neighboring shopkeepers, the shopkeeper\u2019s own customers, and so on. As a service designer myself, I know that by the time this project is finished, they\u2019ll go on to try to understand the perspectives of these other stakeholders too, because that\u2019s what design is: an effort to understand others\u2019 experience and world, and to meet a need that\u2019s meaningful within that world. Designers do this so much that even outside the project, in every interaction, they find themselves thinking about someone else\u2019s world, someone else\u2019s wants, someone else\u2019s needs. Actually, it\u2019s better to say \u201cothers\u2019,\u201d plural \u2014 because this consideration of wants and needs isn\u2019t limited to customers alone; it takes in every important stakeholder in a piece of work. This is how noticing others\u2019 needs becomes a habit \u2014 and even when working inside the team, the \u201cother\u201d becomes that team member who isn\u2019t present right now but whose experience and world must still be considered, since they\u2019re the one who\u2019ll later be looking at the questionnaire results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      This habit can also be seen in Fahimi, the team lead. Having practiced this empathizing with others more than the rest of the team, a few days earlier, on this same food court floor of the mall, while talking with his team members about the contract with the client, he started by talking about the client\u2019s world and what the client needed from this contract: whether inflating the time estimate would upset the client, or whether increasing the hours of work would be something the client could comfortably accept. Even when team members pointed out that in some months, because of the client\u2019s disorganization in assigning tasks, their own work-life schedules had been thrown into disarray, and that it might be better to set a minimum monthly volume of assigned work as a condition for the client, he explained his view to them this way: \u201cI was like this \u2014 that despite the cost we ourselves are bearing, [we do it] to make this onboarding path easy for them, so they can trust us and have no worries at all, and say it\u2019s a hundred percent worth it for me to sign a contract with these guys \u2014 so that we sign contracts of this kind, be alongside these guys for the long term, so that this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Although this \u201cseeing the other\u201d and their needs will raise the quality of interaction with the other, having this habit sometimes brings negative side effects for designers too. One negative side effect is occasionally forgetting the role of the \u201cother\u201d in solving a problem or advancing a project. This can be seen in Melika and Ehsan\u2019s effort to design the clearest possible questionnaire with the respondent\u2019s character in mind, when they forget that although they\u2019re making every effort to create the best experience for the respondent, past a certain point it\u2019s only \u201cdesigning alongside\u201d the respondent that can produce the best result. This is exactly why testing the questionnaire with a small number of the target group is a standard method for getting the best result out of questionnaire design. I remember a project related to insurance, where I myself was on the team, and we were designing a questionnaire; it took three or four days, with every ounce of care from our own point of view, to arrive at a questionnaire we considered flawless for respondents to answer. And when we reached the stage of testing it with a small group of respondents, we ran into the fact that our respondents over 50 years old, who worked in freelance and labor jobs, didn\u2019t understand the colloquial tone of the questions and needed someone younger to read the questions to them in a formal, written-register tone. Even though, in speech and conversation, this group of respondents talks more colloquially than any other group, reading colloquial text left them confused. If we hadn\u2019t run that test, we would never have realized the change that was needed in the questionnaire, or even in the research method itself, for uncovering the respondent\u2019s world. In other words, some part of the \u201cother\u2019s\u201d world that we\u2019ve tried to understand always remains with the other person alone, and we only manage, stage by stage, to uncover parts of it. This is exactly why the stakeholders themselves need to participate in the problem-solving process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Another negative side effect is the designer forgetting themselves as a stakeholder in the relationship with the client \u2014 as when we\u2019re willing to \u201cbear the cost\u201d so that the client can \u201chave no worries at all.\u201d Whereas the client is in fact an important stakeholder in solving the problem of managing the relationship between designer and client, and half of the initiative for arriving at a genuine solution rests with them, and it\u2019s only in \u201cdesigning alongside\u201d the client that the outcome becomes favorable both for the client and for the design team. The design team, too, are human beings who have their own needs in order to do their work. It\u2019s true that playing the role of \u201cempathizer\u201d in solving the organization\u2019s problem falls mainly to them, but they themselves also need \u201cempathy\u201d \u2014 need to have their own world understood by the client \u2014 in order to deliver their best performance.<\/p>\n\n\n

      \n
      \"Dark<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

      I witness the peak of this mutual lack of understanding a month after Fahimi\u2019s meeting with his team about how to deal with the client; we\u2019re sitting in the senior manager\u2019s office, and those present are discussing the prioritization of tasks that need solution design. At the meeting the month before with the client, priorities had been set at the senior manager\u2019s own suggestion and, in some cases, insistence. Now, with only a month passed since that meeting, because of changes in the client\u2019s circumstances, not only have those same priorities from the month before been changed again by the client himself, but he doesn\u2019t even remember what priorities had been set for the design team. To my utter disbelief, as Fahimi is going through the Excel file to show the team\u2019s work plan for the past month and the months ahead, I witness this exchange:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      • Middle manager, Hooman: When\u2019s task X due?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Fahimi, pointing to the file, explains: We had it here in October and December so it wouldn\u2019t clash with your work. If the priority needs to change, you can let us know.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Senior manager, Vala: Did you all arrange these priorities?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Fahimi: Some of them you specified yourself. Some others, whose work was already done and ideation completed, we moved up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Vala: We had a meeting two months ago? Was I there?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Sima, another team member who is the project manager, hearing this exchange, has her eyes go wide, and shoots a surprised look at Fahimi and me, then says in an astonished tone, \u201cIt was a month ago!\u201d Fahimi himself is taken aback too, and glances at Sima, who looks surprised, and at me; I murmur to him, \u201cYeah, I think it was a month ago too,\u201d and then, frowning slightly, he flips through his notebook looking for the meeting date, saying to Vala as he does, \u201cWe can check the exact date in the notebook too, but it was a month ago.\u201d Although Vala says, \u201cLet\u2019s take another look at the priorities. Ninety percent it\u2019s probably still the same, but let\u2019s just check\u201d \u2014 the priority of at least two of the five ongoing tasks gets thrown off, and even becomes entangled, with both ending up at roughly the same priority level and turning into priority number one. On top of that, one task that had been placed at the top of the priority list, specifically at the senior manager\u2019s insistence, and that the design team had been working on the previous month with everything they had, gets dropped from the priorities entirely, because the client\u2019s view of one of the main tenants on the mall\u2019s food court floor has changed. A similar thing happens again the following month, when one of the tasks the team was working on is dropped by the client because of changes in municipal regulations for malls. In the months after that, similar things happen too \u2014 sometimes because a socially sensitive date is approaching, sometimes because someone new has joined or left the organization, and for other reasons as well. Although the client, too, faces a great many changes in this environment, some of which aren\u2019t within his control, what happens to the design team in the midst of all this isn\u2019t even seen by the senior manager or the client\u2019s middle managers, and its effects aren\u2019t acknowledged. The fact that the design team has laid out its work schedule based on these priorities \u2014 and that the arrangement of this schedule has even affected this service design team\u2019s other projects for other clients \u2014 and that the work is now left half-abandoned, leaving the team with a sense that the past month\u2019s efforts were fruitless, none of this registers with the client, who doesn\u2019t even remember what his own decisions were. This repeated pattern got to the point where even I, who was only observing events, felt the pain the team was feeling, and spoke to the team lead about it, suggesting that perhaps it would be better to set some limit on the client regarding the number or stage of priority changes allowed in the schedule. But the feedback I got was: \u201cIt\u2019s natural for their priorities to change, and I understand that too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

        \n
        \"Dark<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

        In both of the cases above, when the mindset of \u201cdesigning for the other\u201d casts a shadow over the designer\u2019s core mindset of \u201cdesigning alongside the other,\u201d the influence of the other party in the interaction on solving the problem gets forgotten, and the opportunity to use the \u201cother\u2019s\u201d ideas to solve the problem is lost. Perhaps sharing the team members\u2019 experience of uncertainty in their work and personal lives \u2014 caused by the client\u2019s failure to assign work on time \u2014 would have given the client a view into the human experience the team members go through in working with his organization. Perhaps raising this human issue wouldn\u2019t have caused distrust at all, but instead would have led, together with the client, to a win-win solution for both sides. But these paths remain hypothetical, at the level of \u201cperhaps,\u201d without our ever knowing what ideas and options might have been available had we walked the path of solving the problem alongside the other stakeholder rather than in his place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Fahimi is an experienced designer, and this isn\u2019t Melika\u2019s first experience in design either, and both of them, as experienced designers, know very well that a designer\u2019s empathizing with the other, in order to understand their world, isn\u2019t meant for making decisions in their place, but rather to enable creating an easier interaction with the audience in solving their problem. The design\u2019s audience has an active role in arriving at a clear problem definition, in reaching ideas, and in implementing solutions \u2014 which is exactly why, in service design specifically, there\u2019s talk of co-creation with stakeholders of the solution, in which the designer facilitates other stakeholders\u2019 participation in reaching a solution \u2014 especially when the conditions governing the problem space are such that we\u2019re facing a wicked problem. A wicked problem, in the world of design, is a problem that, because of the presence of different stakeholders with sometimes conflicting interests, cannot easily be solved, and sometimes even its starting point isn\u2019t clear. Such problems have no right or wrong solution, and the only way to move toward solving them and reaching a \u201cpossible\u201d solution is through negotiation with the other stakeholders. Richard Buchanan, in his article \u201cWicked Problems in Design Thinking,\u201d quotes Rittel \u2014 who first used this term in the 1970s \u2014 describing it as a class of problems related to social systems that are difficult to formulate, where the information is confusing, where there are many stakeholders and decision-makers regarding the solution, sometimes holding conflicting values, and whose branches are scattered confusingly throughout the whole system. He then goes on to say that, under these conditions, design is a systematic approach of logical reasoning and argumentation, guided by designers, aimed at reaching one of the core themes of communication, construction, strategic planning, or systems integration. He holds that argumentation in design thinking moves toward close interaction and mutual connection among objects, things, actions, and thoughts, and that all products of design are an example of this form of argumentation (Buchanan, 1992: 15, 19, 20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        This team\u2019s designers go through this process to solve all of this project\u2019s client\u2019s problems, but in the heavy shadow of the habit of empathizing they\u2019ve developed, they\u2019ve forgotten that the very nature of their own interaction with their client has itself turned into a wicked problem \u2014 one that needs resolving through discussion and negotiation with the client. This is a problem shaped by the client\u2019s own high staff turnover; by the dynamism of the project\u2019s working environment itself, which, as a commercial mall, is affected by all kinds of political and social events; by shifts in the mall\u2019s customers\u2019 behavior patterns in response to each of these events; by economic fluctuations that constantly affect interactions with the shopkeepers; by changes in municipal and city regulations, which occur with high frequency in Iran and especially in Tehran; and so on. All these factors cause the priority of tasks, the volume of work, the personnel the design team interacts with within the client\u2019s organization, and other project conditions to constantly change. Although the design team\u2019s presence in this commercial mall is meant to help create new service solutions precisely within such a highly changeable environment \u2014 and it\u2019s in the presence of such conditions that the work of \u201ccreating a novel solution\u201d takes on a more pronounced meaning \u2014 the way the design team goes about solving the problem, the timing of the work, and the team\u2019s degree of success in doing it all require constant interaction with the other stakeholders, and are bound up with their cooperation. In other words, the design team is itself one of the stakeholders in these circumstances. Under such conditions, change in the client\u2019s circumstances is, in the team lead\u2019s words, \u201cnatural\u201d \u2014 but overlooking the design team as a \u201cstakeholder\u201d in the presence of these complex conditions is not natural at all.<\/p>\n\n\n

        \n
        \"Dark<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

        But here, the designer has continued empathizing with the client to such an extent that he has forgotten his own share in participating toward creating the desired solution, and forgotten that he himself is a stakeholder in solving the problem of interaction with the client; and so that the \u201cother\u201d \u2014 with whom the designer is in his most empathetic state \u2014 doesn\u2019t have to bear the least bit of trouble, he tries to create the best solution for the client, rather than alongside him, and rather than as the result of negotiation with him. This is how the needs of the design team \u2014 both the needs related to carrying out the design work and the team members\u2019 need for better interaction and working conditions \u2014 have gradually been forgotten to such a degree that the client changes the project\u2019s parameters in almost whatever way he sees fit for himself and his organization, without even being aware of what effect each of these changes will have on the design team and, consequently, on the productivity of his own project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Service design projects carry businesses through a problem-solving process rooted in design thinking \u2014 a five-stage process comprising discovering the problem space, defining the problem, ideation, prototyping and testing solutions, and finally implementation. This process isn\u2019t run through just once, but repeated multiple times, and as quickly as possible, in order to reach the best possible outcome. But to get through the first stage \u2014 to more precisely discover the space in which the problem occurs \u2014 the designer must identify the key stakeholders of a problem and be able to describe the problem space from their point of view<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-anthropology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shivasalehnia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}