Empathic Design’s Founding Principles.
Injecting empathy into digital design means more than standing around looking concerned. We’ve identified five key pillars for Empathic Design. They inform everything we do at Design for People. Every pixel, every comma, every action button conceived in our shop is fiercely evaluated through these five lenses. We call them our Five Precepts. You can call them yours, too.
Summing Up…
Everything we do in service to clients is scored against these five litmus tests. It’s pleasing, but can we do better? It’s easy to use, but where can we make it easier?
Empathic Design is no throwaway line. It’s what flows through the wires at Design for People. And the Empathic Design Institute exists in part to make these Five Precepts household words.
There’s an argument, we guess, for keeping the Five Precepts to ourselves. But there was also an argument in 1959 for Volvo to keep its proprietary, newly patented three-point seatbelt to itself. Instead Volvo released the first-of-its-kind design to all its competitors, saying its lifesaving potential was too significant not to share.
The new seatbelt’s inventor, Nils Bohlin, was later lauded as “the man who saved a million lives.”
We’re not saying Empathic Design’s Five Precepts will save a million lives. But maybe they’ll spare a million user headaches. Save a million customer relationships. So we made the Volvo move.
Empathic Design: too significant not to share.