[In Class] Talk Prep – Make Me Care : planning, prototype & practice

Helpful link I found

https://uxplanet.org/empathy-and-product-design-669d71236fb2

Rough Script

2nd Story

When I was young, I remember seeing my dad shouting random English words to himself. Later when I learned English, I learned that he was saying “Empathy! Empathy! Sympathy!” on repeat while practicing his tennis forehand strokes in the living room. He still does this to this day. My dad’s a pastor and he always would tell me empathy is the most important but the most difficult thing to achieve in human relationships. My dad’s a well educated man who graduated from Harvard and got his Ph.D. Emory University. He’s been studying theology for over twenty years now and constantly interacting with different types of people as his profession. But to this day, he claims that he still struggles to empathize with others. When I asked him what empathy means, he gave me three answers

1. 2

2. 2

3. 2

So what is this empathy that my dad has been shouting about the past 17 years?

Central American Minors

This semester, I had the opportunity to transform my understanding empathy into an interactive piece.

(Demonstrate Piece)

As you can see, the piece was about the undocumented, unaccompanied Central American Minors currently detained in US prisons. Before this class, I didn’t even know who they were or that this was happening without my knowing. I was shocked and deeply saddened after learning about their situation.

Empathy in IxD

Empathy is letting go of your assumptions and learnings so you can immerse yourself into learning about the other person's’ life. However, empathy gains the most power when you decide what to do about it with the learnings. Not the end product, but the act of attempt.

Empathy into action is a huge courage because it’s knowing that you’ll never understand your user fully but you still try to make something for them in relation to your full understanding of it.

Empathy not only allows understanding and awareness of others experience and feelings, but it teaches you___ and fuels your creativity.

So how can we apply empathy into our designs?

Empathy is related to knowing - design research, interview

Because no one knows about them but empathy is a way to tell people what’s going on through your designs.

Call to Action, why it’s important

Empathy is

Strong Close

Despite this expeirnece…

Connection to the project from dad shouting (transition)

Empathy takes form in many different ways

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Reflection

I wanted my topic to be about empathy because through this class and the project I’ll be talking about, I learned about empathy in a different light. In the end, design is for humans and by humans. So if there is no empathy for humans throughout the design process, it’s easy to feel lost or lack of satisfaction in the designs we use and create. I also wanted to talk about sketching but in the end, I believe everything should connect back to empathy so I decided to push my idea further.

In deciding the order of the talk, I want to start out with my personal second story. I think it’ll be best to bring the users into the talk with my personal story in relation to my personal definition of empathy. Then, I’ll talk about my project, definition of empathy, call to action, and connect that to a strong closing.

During the practice runs, I’ve gotten feedback to make my voice sound more conversational. I’ve always struggled to sound conversational because I used to memorize my script word for word. That was the only way I could successfully deliver my speeches when I was learning English because it never came natural to me from the start. And soon, this became a habit of my public speaking. So I’m planning to work on making my speech sound more natural and have more connection with the audience (especially since my topic is about empathy!). Also, Gina told me that the transition between my second story to talking about my project felt a little abrupt. So I will find a way to make a smoother connection.