Appropriate levels of empathy with user

Healthy organizations ensure that user-centred thinking exists within the community of engineers, within the sales group, within the strategy group and not just in one part of the organization. The intention is to design for the people who are actually going to use the artefact, and the intention is make it beautiful in an inter-subjective way, such that the designer and the user can agree that it is beautiful.

Designers and engineers have to develop the appropriate levels of empathy with the user to be able know and understand what the end user will want to relate to or will be attracted to. Ultimately, Sood argues, the designer should want to achieve a certain attitude that can be reflected in his or her work, which will cause the user to achieve a state of indirectly knowing that this product was particularly designed for him or her: "We would like you to see, not only the existence of another mind and other minds behind this artifact, but we would like you to know that we have been in communion with you when we designed this. You have to achieve that kind of empathy. If you don't, you will be obviously putting too much of yourself into the product you design, too much self and not enough collective truth, or truth specific to the target user group."

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