I'm so excited to share this book club experiment with you. I've been inviting alums of my facilitation masterclass and subscribers to the conversation factory insiders group into intimate conversations with authors of transformative books. In this conversation, my friend Brian Pagán, Author of "The Creative Empathy Field Guide," is our guest.
Brian points out early on that empathy is lauded by many thought leaders and no lack of articles - with the simple, inspirational message that empathy is good for you! And while that is absolutely true, what is missing is the how of empathy - not the why. Brain sought to fill this gap with his book, "the creative empathy field guide" which is a very short and very helpful book....and if you follow the links to Brian's website at the Greatness Studio, he's got a "greatest hits" selection from the book that you can access, free of charge.
So: Just to clarify our definitions: Creative Empathy is the use of empathy in the creative process. That is, we are making things and those things are not for us. So, we must learn to both connect with those people we are creating for and to detach from them - we have to tap into our skills of emotional agility to lean in and out of creative empathy.
One thing that you'll find most surprising (or at least I did!) is that creative empathy benefits from some of the tools of method acting - the ability to connect to your own experience and bring that experience into the present moment.
One thing that is missing from this conversation is my friend and guest from early in 2021, Dr. Lesely Ann Noel, who really helped me understand that there are limits to us-them dichotomies in design thinking and that designing for others can reinforce existing power dynamics, stereotypes and "othering" of people. Brian does address this in his book, but I recommend my conversation with Dr. Noel, DeColonizing Design Thinking. Dr. Noel has a complementary array of tools to help decolonize our thinking, like her Positionality Wheel which we turned into a Mural template to help you facilitate that conversation with your teams.
In this conversation, Brian and the Conversation Factory Insiders Community dives deep into The Empathic Design Process that Brian adapted:
1. Discovery, 2. Immersion, 3. Connection, 4. Detachment
Discovery: As creators, we approach the other person’s world, which provokes our interest, curiosity, and willingness to empathize.
Immersion: We enter the other person’s world, look around, and absorb what we see without judgment.
Connection: Here, we resonate with the other person’s experience by recalling our own relevant experiences and memories.
Detachment: Finally, we leave their world to focus on creative action, before starting the cycle afresh.
Also check out Brian’s site for Free Creative Empathy Tools like an Ethical Design Checklist, his Journey Map Canvas and a Character Map Canvas (as an alternative to personas).
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
The Greatness Studio - What’s your superpower?
Creative Empathy - The Greatness Studio
Double Diamond: What is the framework for innovation? Design Council's evolved Double Diamond
Personas: "The word derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask"
Method Acting: "The method" is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions
For-With-Am-For: Shifting Perspectives as a key to the creative process: Discovery "I work for you", Immersion shifts to the 2nd person "I feel you", Connection shifts to the 1st person "I am you" and Detachment shifts to the 3rd person again "I work for you."
Minute 18
Daniel Stillman:
If you were to choose one tool, what is your favorite tool for getting people to connect? When you talk about it as a field book and you talk about tools and techniques when you're teaching teams about how to be more creative in the way they connect for creative projects, what do you feel is the tool that people really find the greatest leverage or connection or ease in? And maybe also which one's the hardest and the most struggling, but that they should get better at?
Brian Pagán:
I think the biggest... I hesitate to call it a connection technique because I think it's something that serves the entire inner loop, so it's for immersion and connection in that sense, but trigger cards and sensitizers as something that's in the book. These are... So if we look at the idea of sensitizers, any sensitizer is some sort of bit of information or some kind of story or some kind of personal thing that we share about someone in the targeted audience or in our group of people we're designing for, that allows us to emotionally connect with it. Somehow invites our resonance, our emotional resonance with that thing.
And one of the ways that we can create sensitizers are trigger cards. And in the book, I show trigger cards from Melina Lopez Reyes who is a graduated master's student. And she did her project, her graduation project in Mexico around victims of domestic abuse. And what she found was that whenever she was working together with government officials or people who run associations or sort of volunteer organizations that help victims of domestic violence, they... In ideation sessions, it was helpful for her to sort of prime people with stories from her interviews. So she talked with a lot of different victims and made their stories really easily digestible with these little cards that people can use.
So before an ideation session, she can distribute these cards to the participants of the ideation session, and either as part of the session itself or as part of the pre-read that before you actually join the session, you can go through and look at these trigger cards. And because they tell such intimate stories and real stories based on actual research, they allow us to emotionally resonate with what's going on and the experience of those people that we're actually going to be ideating for in the session itself.
Minute 21:
Daniel Stillman:
My last question before I unleash the other brains in this room is what is not in the book but should be? Because I know that happened to me.
Brian Pagán:
Oh yeah, for sure. There's so many things. What's not in the book and should be? What is going to be in the expanded version is something about the hierarchy of spiritual intelligence from Cindy Wigglesworth. And going back to our earlier talking about humanity and recognizing shared humanity, Cindy Wigglesworth came up with this thing called this hierarchy of spiritual intelligence, which is basically four stages of connection between people going from apathy to compassion.
So first it starts with apathy, like you don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever. And then there's sympathy, which is not quite empathy, or you feel sorry for someone, but you're still not really opening yourself and being vulnerable to putting yourself on their shoes or even trying to relate to them on that level. Then after that is empathy, where we actually recognize each other's humanity, we actually try to connect our own experiences with the other person's experience. And then we have compassion, which is where we take our empathy and our feelings of wanting to help this person and actually put them into action and do something about it. This is where we build a house or help the person out or give a hug or these, whatever compassionate action it happens to be. Or design an app for them, or whatever kind of thing. These are the four stages, let's say, of from how you get to compassion.
And just bringing those together and putting empathy in that context helps to understand that, one, if you can feel empathy for someone else, it basically forces you to recognize them as a human being and recognize their humanity because you're connecting your own experiences with their own too. So I think that's quite important and also shows that empathy can lead to compassion. It's hard to have compassion for someone if we don't have empathy for them first, if that makes sense. So those are the two key things that I'd like to bring in in the next version, let's say.
Minute 24
Erin Warner:
Could you explain the purpose and the value of detachment?
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely. So as far as I understand it, the difference between immersion and detachment is just the fact that it's hard for us to look objectively almost at something if we're still immersed in another person's world. Another way to say it could be that empathy exists out of two different components. There's the effective emotional component, and then there's the cognitive more rational component. And if we have too much of one without the other, then it can either be dangerous if we have just emotional empathy without rational empathy. But it can also just go too shallowly. If we don't connect emotionally, then we're not going to... We're not really having true empathy in that sense.
So I think by virtue of the fact that we go, we immerse ourselves in another person's world and then connect our own experiences with that, that's the inner loop. And then once we detach from that, then it gives us the psychological space and distance to be able to more effectively weigh the needs of the person in whom's world we just were immersed in, and everybody else, if that makes sense.
More About Brian
Hats I wear include speaker, actor, podcaster, writer, and UX consultant. Over the last 19 years, I’ve worked with around 40 clients, coached 16 startups, and traveled to 11 countries to give talks and teach classes.
I founded The Greatness Studio in 2016, Computer Drama in 2018, and MindFolk in 2020.
My home is with Hester Bruikman-Pagán in Zeeland (Netherlands), and I’ve loved avocados since before it was cool.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
I'm going to start recording in progress. Brian Pagán, thanks for being here for the Conversation Factory Book Club. And Chantel, Erin, and Jim, thanks for being here from the community to make the conversation so much more interesting than it would be if it was just me or just me and Brian. If it was just me by myself talking for the whole time, I don't think that would be that interesting at all. So thanks for making the time you all.
Daniel Stillman:
Brian, people can Google you, but what's important for us to know about you that we cannot find on the Google? What's important for us to know about you so we can get to know you before we get started?
Brian Pagán:
It's funny. I was just having a conversation with some students at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and a lot of students are doing projects around gender and gender identity. And we just went off on a tangent talking about how more common it is these days to be defined by what you're not in the sense that anyone who might be different from the mainstream or different from what we would consider a default in Western society, that we're just starting to define ourselves as like non-monogamous or non-binary or non this, non that. And it's, yeah, I think in some kind of way, I think that applies to me a lot as well. I remember having a T-shirt back in the day in Germany that said "Not quite normal." And I feel like if there's a sort of nutshell description of myself, I think that would be it.
Daniel Stillman:
Not quite normal.
Brian Pagán:
Maybe that's how I want, I pretend that I am. Maybe I'm just super normal and very boring, but then I think, oh yeah, if I pretend I'm not... But people think I'm more interesting. Maybe it's that. I don't know, but I definitely, yeah, don't feel like I fit into a lot of the default things of our society, if that makes sense.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, that does make sense, and I identify with that, which is maybe why we hit it off. So Chantel, Erin, Jim, what you don't know is Jim and Brian and I met drinking I think in New Orleans as is common at an interaction, Information Architecture Conference like 2012. That was a really, really long time ago. And we reconnected recently and sort of found that the arcs of our careers from sort of user experience design to thinking about humans. And UX designers at one point sort of woke up to this idea of like, "We're the only people who talk about our customers in the same way that drug dealers do." That's one of the classic quips of like...
Brian Pagán:
Oh yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
They're people, and then also in sort of the coaching and transformation space. So Brian and I have a lot of overlap. We've had some really wonderful deep conversations. And he shared this book with me and I thought it would be a really interesting opportunity to share this book with you all.
Jim Burke:
Drinking happens in New Orleans?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. It does.
Brian Pagán:
What? Shocking. Clutch the pearls.
Jim Burke:
And that's where the best conversations come from. The deepest thoughts come out of doing that.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, let's just say from heightened states of consciousness, Jim. There's lots of ways to get there.
Brian Pagán:
For sure. Yeah. I will say there were also musical instruments there. There was a lot of music, music playing, piano playing, and singing, and guitar playing, and stuff at the party we were.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, that was a good party. A rare party. It was one of those... Somebody had rented a room that had one of those balconies. There's something... By the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't been to New Orleans... Show of hands, who's been to... Chantel, have you been there?
Jim Burke:
Who's been there? Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
You've been to New Orleans? Chantel, that's amazing. All the way from South Africa.
Chantel Botha:
Five years. Daniel, five years in a row. If you say "New Orleans," I say-
Daniel Stillman:
"When."
Chantel Botha:
... "Beads, beignets, and hurricanes."
Daniel Stillman:
The drink, not the atmospheric-
Chantel Botha:
Yes. No. The refillable cups with-
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also jazz.
Brian Pagán:
Like this tall made out of plastic with a huge straw. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
And crawfish. That's what's really important to me about them.
Chantel Botha:
And then some black magic if you're into that.
Daniel Stillman:
And some black magic. All right. So now we really know Brian. Excuse me. So I'm really curious as somebody who's written a book, how is the book, how did writing the book change you? What was like, this is maybe my meta question was like, what was it like for you to write a book about this and what has it done to you? Maybe not for you.
Brian Pagán:
That's a great question. I think the first thing would be that it made it lot less scary for me to write a book, if that makes sense. Just I guess the first time... Because I always knew that I wanted to write a book or write books. I've always been very interested in writing. And so I, for a long time, I had the fantasy of just writing a book. But doing it the way that I did with the publisher Bookboon, they had a specific process, and it's almost like they coach you through the whole thing, and that really helped me to just write the first one, if that makes sense. And most of the time, the first one's the hardest one, right? So I think after that, I guess just the internal change or internal shift for me is I feel much more confident as a writer. I feel much more confident in the idea of, could I write a book? Yeah. I know I can. I have proof. And also just articulating the ideas in such a way that other people can hopefully understand them.
Brian Pagán:
I'm really curious to hear you all's thoughts about this too. Because did I succeed or not? We'll see. But yeah, I think that was the biggest change was the internal change of having confidence and also more the content wise change of understanding the things that I wanted to write about better because I had to formulate them for other people.
Daniel Stillman:
And why empathy and why creative empathy? Why a field book?
Brian Pagán:
So empathy is something that I feel like we need more of in the world. I know there are people who don't necessarily agree with that with folks like Paul Bloom, for example, talk more about compassion than empathy. But in my mind, empathy is something that we need if we want to be able to have compassion for each other and treat each other more kindly.
Brian Pagán:
And if there's... I don't know. I feel like there's a general overwhelming understanding that we seem to be farther from each other as human beings than ever. And they're all kind of factors and stuff, but one way to get back through that is just to recognize each other's humanity, treat each other like people. And I feel like if we were trained in emotional intelligence, if we learned very practical things, techniques about how to regulate your own emotions, how to empathize with another human being, how to listen to each other, then the world would be a much better place with or without technology, if that makes sense.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, it does.
Brian Pagán:
You still hear me. I'm getting a message that my internet connection is unstable, so...
Daniel Stillman:
Oh no. I hear you loud and clear.
Brian Pagán:
I hope I'm not breaking up.
Daniel Stillman:
That's fine for me.
Brian Pagán:
Oh.
Daniel Stillman:
So I think it's really important to contextualize this because I think there's at least two layers here. Obviously, there's the human and day to day, but specifically you're coming from the context of product design and product innovation. And so that's where I think the empathy process and the sort of like the first question I have for you is a visual question. Well, it's because this diagram was new for me. And this... I mean, I love visuals. I love models. I love loops, especially when there's two of them, and this empathic design process, and for people who are listening, maybe you can describe it, how you found it, and why... I mean, because it's sort of like, to me it feels like the backbone, the beating heart of the book, if that's correct.
Brian Pagán:
It definitely is. For sure. For sure.
Daniel Stillman:
Also interestingly in the book, I don't think this is red, this little number three is red, but on Bookboon, it is, which is interesting. So maybe you can tell us about...
Brian Pagán:
So of course there are two versions of it. There's a color one for the digital, for the ebook, and for the just paper book I wanted to keep costs down and try to make sure that things are, for the environment they aren't too damaging. So I did everything here in monochrome black and white. So basically, it's all in just black ink, whatever.
Brian Pagán:
But yeah, to answer your question. So I definitely see this for me as the big theoretical backbone of everything. And for folks listening, basically it's two loops. There's a loop inside another loop. So it's a four-step process and the two steps in the middle, so steps two and three, form their own sort of loop, if that makes sense. So you go through the first stage is part of the outer loop. And then in the second step, you go into the inner loop, to the third step, and this is immersion and connection. And then you leave that inner loop and go outside again to the outer loop with the fourth step. And just to really quickly talk through that, the four stages are discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment. Yes, exactly like you've drawn it with the thing on the screen.
Daniel Stillman:
Terribly.
Brian Pagán:
But it does make sense in that way because it's sort of almost like a railroad track in the sense that you go into one and go onto the other one. And if you look at-
Daniel Stillman:
So discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment.
Brian Pagán:
And detachment, yes. Yeah. So if we look at like a traditional design process, we already have discovery, immersion, and detachment. Discovery would be something like when we do market research and we notice that there are, I don't know, there are millennials who would like to have some kind of product and they're not getting it yet, and their needs aren't being met for some reason. And then people would start doing UX research. This is where we do immersion, where we do ethnographic studies, or they gather information about people.
Brian Pagán:
And then we skipped already to detachment. This is where we start designing stuff. And what empathy does, and the reason why, and just to go back to your earlier question, why creative empathy? Creative empathy for me is empathy applied to a creative process. And that's why it's a field guide as well. Because I wanted to make it very practical. Most of the stuff around empathy these days... I don't want to talk trash about anybody, but a lot of it is about how great empathy is and how it can help our lives, but there's not really much around how do I get started? Steps one, step two, step three in order to do empathy.
Daniel Stillman:
Just by, just super meta, that's very empathic of you to not talk trash about the other empathic thought views.
Brian Pagán:
Thank you.
Daniel Stillman:
I can really see their point.
Brian Pagán:
Exactly. Yes. I try to... But so this connection part, basically the thing about empathy is, it's twofold. One is that as designers, everyone's always talking about, "Yes, I'm customer obsessed and I want people to... I want to make things that people love. And I want people to really fall in love with my business and my brand," but we are not allowing ourselves in the creation process to be vulnerable towards the people for whom we're creating. Right? So we don't fall in love with them, but we expect them to fall in love with us. Right? And so this connection phase is when we actually, after immersion, after we've immersed ourselves in the world of another person through our research or through simulators or whatever, the connection phase is where we create space to reflect in our own experiences to understand that thinking about the last time that I felt the way that this person I'm observing is feeling.
Brian Pagán:
And then I can ask myself, what do I need when I feel like that? And if I can recall that in myself, this is another reason why I use a lot of acting techniques in the book, because acting is a lot about emotional recall and stuff, like bringing an emotional state into your mind so that you can use it. Once I get that into my head... Let's say I'm looking at someone and I can see that they're sad while they're interacting with a certain system. What do I need when I'm sad? I can recall that for myself. And then when I detach myself and start working on the actual solution, then I have an extra layer of insight and understanding into the sadness and the needs of the sadness around it. Does that make sense?
Daniel Stillman:
It makes a ton of sense. And I really want to highlight a phrase you said that was devastating, which is that we expect our customers to fall in love with us and our products, but we don't fall in love with them. And that's really profound because I think there's something fundamental about empathy that relies on humanity and equity. And I love the idea of truly bilateral relationships, of relationships among equals, and the idea that there should be for every action an equal and opposite reaction from my physics heritage. It's like, why-
Brian Pagán:
It's like Newtonian design.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, Newtonian design. It's like, and so now I get why it's in red, that the connection is so deeply important. And there's all these techniques that you have around it, like free writing and method acting, which I want to make sure we talk about. And that's why it's underlined in red, is that that's the step that you feel is missing in a traditional double diamond UX. Find a problem and then find a hole and then fill the hole process.
Brian Pagán:
And I will say another... If you don't mind, we'll just one more thing about the empathic design process. I don't necessarily see it as on a project level where you have a project that's discovery, immersion, connection, and detachment. I see the empathic design process very much as sort of a fractal kind of thing that can also apply within other stages of design processes. So for example, you just mentioned the double diamond. And the double diamond has four stages where you diverge and then converge and then diverge again and converge again. And within those stages, I feel like you can repeatedly do an empathic design process. It can be at every phase of a project. It can be every sprint. It can be every day. It can be that as a designer, you might be going through this process a few times a day as you're making decisions going forward through moving pixels.
Daniel Stillman:
It's fractal.
Brian Pagán:
It's very fractal in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
So two things I want to say. By the way, if Chantel, Erin, Jim, if you need to or want to break in at any point and say, if there's something unclear, you want to go deeper in something, you don't have to save your questions to the question. We're all equal humans here.
Daniel Stillman:
And I guess the second thing that's coming up for me, because maybe this is the thing that we wouldn't know about you if we Googled you, or maybe it is, is your acting experience. I mean, it's in the book, but I think the reason I'm interested in this is the idea that all of us can and maybe should, not to should anybody, can and should bring all of the parts of ourselves to the things that we're doing. And it's really interesting that because you have this acting heritage, you're like, "You know what this is like? This is like method acting," thought no one else ever. Right? And so I don't know if that's a question or a comment or just like a tell me more about that. And also just to anybody, for everyone, I think it's just, it's so valuable to be able to bring all the parts of yourself to a challenge. So kudos for doing that. And also tell us more about method acting for people who don't know about the method.
Brian Pagán:
The method. I love that. Yeah. So your question, I mean, answering your question is going to touch on so many things because in creating the book, it was exactly bringing different parts of myself and different interests that I had together into one space because I'm an actor, but I'm also, I practice mindfulness and I noticed a lot of things there that could be useful for design practice that aren't necessarily taught as part of a design practice, which I think is like a missed chance. And we talk a lot about empathy and we talk about empathizing with personas and with fictitious characters or characters in a product development cycle, but actors have been doing this for 3,000 years, three-and-a-half thousand, 4,000 years, or however long people have existed, they've pretended to be other people, and-
Daniel Stillman:
For fun.
Brian Pagán:
For fun. Yeah. Or for money or whatever. To precipitate social change. But there's already a really wide existence of techniques and almost a science that we can lean on and inform ourselves with that we're just not even paying attention to, which I think is a shame. So this is my attempt at a first, let's say, interconnection between those different disciplines, mindfulness, acting, and design.
Daniel Stillman:
Right, because this is... I was just in Greece for my honeymoon. And so I stood in one of these amphitheaters on the goddamn Acropolis.
Brian Pagán:
I'm jealous. Wow.
Daniel Stillman:
And you're like, "This is a place." Right? And it's been occupied on and off since prehistoric times, right? So it's like this little divot in the hillside just was used as a divot in the hillside, and then somebody put rocks in it so people could sit down and not give muddy, which was very nice. But this was the thing about personas. The word persona comes from persona, to speak through, because when they did these... When they acted, they used these masks that also helped them project their voices to the hundreds and hundreds of people. And I think personas are these things that are thrown around in the design field, and finding out the origin of this word persona, to speak through, was mind-blowing. So tell me what that sparks in you, Brian, because I heard you, just like your yes.
Brian Pagán:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's by creating a persona or a character, we let our target audience speak to us. So yeah, I mean it... Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Cool.
Daniel Stillman:
And maybe in terms of connection, if you were to choose, and this is a terrible question, one tool. If you were to choose one tool, what is your favorite tool for getting people to connect? When you talk about it as a field book and you talk about tools and techniques when you're teaching teams about how to be more creative in the way they connect for creative projects, what do you feel is the tool that people really find the greatest leverage or connection or ease in? And maybe also which one's the hardest and the most struggling, but that they should get better at?
Brian Pagán:
I think on the team level especially-
Daniel Stillman:
We can walk on two, both sides of that.
Brian Pagán:
For sure. I think the biggest... I hesitate to call it a connection technique because I think it's something that serves the entire inner loop, so it's for immersion and connection in that sense, but trigger cards and sensitizers as something that's in the book. These are... So if we look at the idea of sensitizers, any sensitizer is some sort of bit of information or some kind of story or some kind of personal thing that we share about someone in the targeted audience or in our group of people we're designing for, that allows us to emotionally connect with it. Somehow invites our resonance, our emotional resonance with that thing.
Brian Pagán:
And one of the ways that we can create sensitizers are trigger cards. And in the book, I show trigger cards from Melina Lopez Reyes who is a graduated master's student. And she did her project, her graduation project in Mexico around victims of domestic abuse. And what she found was that whenever she was working together with government officials or people who run associations or sort of volunteer organizations that help victims of domestic violence, they... In ideation sessions, it was helpful for her to sort of prime people with stories from her interviews. So she talked with a lot of different victims and made their stories really easily digestible with these little cards that people can use.
Brian Pagán:
So before an ideation session, she can distribute these cards to the participants of the ideation session, and either as part of the session itself or as part of the pre-read that before you actually join the session, you can go through and look at these trigger cards. And because they tell such intimate stories and real stories based on actual research, they allow us to emotionally resonate with what's going on and the experience of those people that we're actually going to be ideating for in the session itself.
Brian Pagán:
So for me, that's, I think, one of those measures or one of these techniques that takes very little effort and is quite easy to do, but it gives... The ROI is huge for this kind of thing. Does that answer your question?
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, it really does. My last question before I unleash the other brains in this room is what is not in the book but should be? Because I know that happened to me.
Brian Pagán:
Oh yeah, for sure. There's so many things. What's not in the book and should be? What is going to be in the expanded version is something about the hierarchy of spiritual intelligence from Cindy Wigglesworth. And going back to our earlier talking about humanity and recognizing shared humanity, Cindy Wigglesworth came up with this thing called this hierarchy of spiritual intelligence, which is basically four stages of connection between people going from apathy to compassion.
Brian Pagán:
So first it starts with apathy, like you don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever. And then there's sympathy, which is not quite empathy, or you feel sorry for someone, but you're still not really opening yourself and being vulnerable to putting yourself on their shoes or even trying to relate to them on that level. Then after that is empathy, where we actually recognize each other's humanity, we actually try to connect our own experiences with the other person's experience. And then we have compassion, which is where we take our empathy and our feelings of wanting to help this person and actually put them into action and do something about it. This is where we build a house or help the person out or give a hug or these, whatever compassionate action it happens to be. Or design an app for them, or whatever kind of thing. These are the four stages, let's say, of from how you get to compassion.
Brian Pagán:
And just bringing those together and putting empathy in that context helps to understand that, one, if you can feel empathy for someone else, it basically forces you to recognize them as a human being and recognize their humanity because you're connecting your own experiences with their own too. So I think that's quite important and also shows that empathy can lead to compassion. It's hard to have compassion for someone if we don't have empathy for them first, if that makes sense. So those are the two key things that I'd like to bring in in the next version, let's say.
Daniel Stillman:
I think that's absolutely wonderful. Well, you answered all of my questions, so I'm going to pass the mic over to Erin first because she took the most copious notes in the Google slide stock that I shared. So Erin, what-
Brian Pagán:
Super cool. Thank you for that too, by the way.
Daniel Stillman:
Ditto, Erin, what is left in your mind that you want to unpack since we've got Brian here?
Erin Warner:
I know. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for this book, Brian. Yeah, I do have some questions, and maybe I'm sure they reflect where I'm coming from in my experience, but could you talk a little bit more about detachment? And you said that's in the standard repertoire of design, but I'm not really coming from that world, and so the word rings a little almost negative to me. Could you explain the purpose and the value of detachment?
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely. So as far as I understand it, the difference between immersion and detachment is just the fact that it's hard for us to look objectively almost at something if we're still immersed in another person's world. Another way to say it could be that empathy exists out of two different components. There's the affective emotional component, and then there's the cognitive more rational component. And if we have too much of one without the other, then it can either be dangerous if we have just emotional empathy without rational empathy. But it can also just go too shallowly. If we don't connect emotionally, then we're not going to... We're not really having true empathy in that sense.
Brian Pagán:
So I think by virtue of the fact that we go, we immerse ourselves in another person's world and then connect our own experiences with that, that's the inner loop. And then once we detach from that, then it gives us the psychological space and distance to be able to more effectively weigh the needs of the person in whom's world we just were immersed in, and everybody else, if that makes sense.
Brian Pagán:
So if I go into your world and I want to create something for you, if I'm still immersed in your world in my head while I'm trying to create something for you, then I'm going to forget everyone else, and I'm going to make something that works for you, even if it maybe exploits someone else. But if I can detach first, then it gives me that bird's eye view again where I can do something that helps you, but then I can also balance the needs of other people, the people around you, maybe people, other passive stakeholders of whatever I'm designing, in such a way that you are helped without trying to hurt someone else, if that makes sense. Does that answer your question?
Erin Warner:
Yeah, definitely. And actually, now that I hear you saying it, that was in the book. I read it. But then hearing you say it, connecting it directly to the detachment phase really clarifies. Thank you.
Brian Pagán:
Thanks. That's a good note. Maybe I should make that more explicit.
Daniel Stillman:
I'll give you the transcript, Brian. Chantel, Jim, just in terms of following that thread, is there anything more that you wanted to probe at on that topic or a different topic? But first, I want to see if there's anything deeper on that that's worth following. Because I'll just say one thing that's coming. Oh, wait, Jim, was that... I couldn't... Was that your mouth moving? I can't tell.
Jim Burke:
No, no, no. Go ahead. I have a completely different thread to go and disrupt everything with.
Daniel Stillman:
No, that's great. I was just designing the conversation. I was like, should we go deeper before we go other, elsewhere? It's-
Brian Pagán:
You've got the conversation canvas in front of your face, don't you Daniel? I know you're like looking at it. Which one am I-
Daniel Stillman:
It's on my brain.
Brian Pagán:
It's burned.
Daniel Stillman:
It's burned on my brain. One of the things that's coming up for me is the classic example of somebody coming to you and being like, "I'm sad" or "I'm upset." Just on the one-to-one conversation basis, on the human basis of like, "I'm sad. I'm having a hard time," and somebody goes, "You know what you should do is blank." Right? And that's going straight from the cognitive without any of the emotional resonance. It's like, "Oh, I'm so sorry you're going through that. That sounds hard."
Brian Pagán:
Yeah. I would even go as far as-
Daniel Stillman:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Count to 10.
Brian Pagán:
I would even take it farther and say that a response like that is sympathy rather than empathy. Because it's easy to just come with solutions. I don't have to be vulnerable with that. I don't have to sit with you in your pain or in your trauma or in your experience in order to give you solutions. I just say, "Oh, you know what you should do? Just do that and that." It's real easy.
Daniel Stillman:
I read an article about that. You should read it.
Brian Pagán:
Here. I'll send you a podcast.
Daniel Stillman:
And I think the other thing that's important about detachment is that there are choices that have to be made in a creative project sometimes. Right?
Brian Pagán:
Yeah. Always.
Daniel Stillman:
And trade-offs. And I think that's sort of the classic trope of the designer, because that's where... He's like just fighting for the user and the customer, and you don't understand what they need. It's like, well... And then there's the trade-off of like, well, how will this be profitable? How will this be paid for? It's capitalism.
Brian Pagán:
When I teach-
Daniel Stillman:
Sorry, Erin.
Brian Pagán:
... beginning... When I teach basic UX, I have a slide on it with a... It's like a spider web with a little spider in the middle. And I like to talk about UX being in the middle of the web. We have to balance the needs of... On the outside edges of the web, there's developers and business and the user, and then there's people around the user, and then there's maybe legal team, and then there's maybe some experts or whatever. And we're like, we have to balance all that stuff. It's not just user advocate. We have to think of all these other things and like you say, make trade-offs and everything like that.
Daniel Stillman:
Right. And I'll just say, sorry for... But when I talk about that, that is that cloud three-way Venn diagram of user focus, business focus, and engineering focus. I'm like, those are people. Money people matter too. They have concerns and they need to be listened to, and sometimes their feelings need to be assuaged, and we have to empathize with them. And so the tech people, they're like, "I can't do that."
Brian Pagán:
Those poor money people.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, those poor money people. But there's people behind it where it's not just about... It is about finding appropriate balance between those three fundamental forces.
Brian Pagán:
Of course.
Daniel Stillman:
All right. I'll stop tirading.
Brian Pagán:
No, thanks for pointing that out. It's a good one.
Daniel Stillman:
Ladies first. Chantel, what's on your mind? What's important for you to bring into the conversation?
Chantel Botha:
So Brian, thank you for the book. I loved it. I skim read it. And Daniel said to me, "It's a light read. You're going to love it." And I really did. And I'm looking at the book more in the context of almost if someone said to me, "I've got a magic wand. What would I change in the world?" I would probably want to put just a whack load of kindness and empathy in the world. I really think we need a lot more of this. I mean, your book should be a prescribed book for every human on the planet, I think.
Brian Pagán:
Thank you.
Chantel Botha:
And it, I think it should be, I think empathy should be taught at school. So I've got two questions for you. So the first one is the emotional interest, how to escalate someone's emotional interest. Because what I see, and I operate a lot in the service environment teaching call center people and service professionals how to survive their jobs, and how to start thriving, and how to find passion, and how to unleash the human potential. And really what I see in that environment, there's a lot of people that have gone on autopilot. It takes a lot less energy. They don't really want to connect. They don't really want to feel if someone says to them, "You need to fill in this form." And the client replies, "You know what, I can't fill in the form. My son's sick and they need to go to the doctor." They pick, "We really need the form be because before we can do anything," rather than taking the bait and saying, "I'm so sorry to hear about your son." So I mean, a lot of what we see is energy conservation. So how can I create motivation for someone to want to connect and want to feel, because my value proposition is not very compelling. Yeah. Hey, feel some empathy. You're going to feel like shit. You're going to be sad. You're going to feel someone else's pain. And then what? Like...
Daniel Stillman:
We need to work on your sales pitch, Chantel. That's for sure.
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely.
Chantel Botha:
Daniel, do you have time for me? We can brainstorm it together.
Daniel Stillman:
We have Brian here. I think he's... Hopefully, he's going to help you find another entry point into the conversation.
Brian Pagán:
Nope. Empathy sucks. I'm leaving. No. I think it's a... I love that you gave me some context around it as well, because I think... So I have two, let's say, responses to the question or to the scenario. I would say the first response, if it's about creating that motivation, I feel like for most of us, obviously not for everyone, but for most of the human beings on the planet, we have this already inside us. We are born with the desire to be social, to understand people, to be kind to each other. And I would even go as far as to say that that's one of the reasons why we've survived while Neanderthals and other forms of humanity have died out is because we work together with each other. We help each other out. We take care of little babies and stuff. We don't just run around and hunting all day.
Brian Pagán:
So I think it's inside, and one way to I think help that happen for call center employees, for example, would be to create more space for them to allow them the time and the energy and the breaks and the recovery time to be able to actually do that kind of stuff, and listen, and be curious.
Brian Pagán:
Because of course I'm coming from a bunch of assumptions here. So if I say something that isn't true or isn't accurate, just please jump in and correct me. But I have the feeling that most of the customer service professions these days, a lot of times the companies look at customer service almost as bandaid or like a hygiene factor. It's like something they have to have, and they're not really passionate about it, and they're not interested in innovating around customer service. So the budgets for these kind of departments tend to be really low. And they say, "Okay, we need to hire a bunch of people, and they have a script, and they have the stuff that they need to do, and they just need to deal with it and stop bothering us with your problems."
Brian Pagán:
But if we give people, if we empower people to actually do things for people to help people out, and we give them the space to be able to recover from if they decide to immerse themselves in a person's world that they're talking to on the phone and listen to the fact that their son is sick and how is that affecting that person and how is it affecting their life and filling in the form and all that stuff. And like, "I get it. It's okay. Let's talk about it for a minute." If we can give them that space afterwards to be able to recover, then I think it makes it easier for them to actually do it. And especially if we model these behaviors, if we create a culture around listening and around non-judgmental observation, I think that could be helpful. But that is one. So that's one aspect of it is sort of taking away obstacles and letting it happen on its own.
Brian Pagán:
But if we're also trying to promote it a little bit, I think what we don't talk about enough might be this feeling of connection that we do get once the, let's say the climax happens and the sadness cloud sort of resolves, and the other person comes back and says, "You know what, thank you so much for this conversation. That really means a lot." Or "I feel much better having talked to you. Thank you for listening. This really, really just helped me feel better." And the feeling that you get when someone gives you that feedback is just amazing. And it costs time, it costs energy, it costs sadness, emotional, this journey, but it can be extremely rewarding. And think about if you do this 4, 5, 6 times a day, it's like a drug maybe. You'd feel really good. It's just this drug of helping people out and making people feel good and happy. That's amazing. Human connection. Yeah, we don't talk about that enough.
Chantel Botha:
And it's legal. It's a legal drug.
Brian Pagán:
It's legal even.
Chantel Botha:
I like that angle. I really do like that angle. I'm not sure how I would sell that up the hierarchy, because I think as the seniority and the pay grade gets more, I'm not sure that they're going to necessarily buy the legal drug. But thank you. Thank you for that perspective.
Chantel Botha:
I've got one more question for you. So if you had 60 minutes with a person that's very unempathetic, you've got a bundle of tricks and some magic sprinkle dust in your book, how would you... And I know you said earlier, we all have this inner, so we've kind of lost it a little bit. So let's just think about kind of the gem or the diamond that we've lost. But how would you in 60 minutes just reignite that empathy, flick on that switch? What would you do with a person?
Brian Pagán:
I hope you're not going to hate my answer. It's a typical coach answer, but I would listen first. Through going through a process of just listening and validating, listening and helping this person feel comfortable about what they're saying, helping them feel comfortable about what they're explaining about why they don't feel empathy or what holds them back, and accepting that for them, it's true. Even if I don't agree, it's for them, that's the reality that they're living with, and just observing that nonjudgmentally and creating space for them to sort of air out maybe some of the things that might be weighing on them that stands in their way.
Brian Pagán:
Sometimes it's enough for people to just get certain things off their chest or have articulated certain things maybe from their childhood. Maybe people don't understand that they went through this thing where, I don't know, their dad gave them a spanking because they were crying for some kind of thing. And boys don't cry. That's weak, or some kind of thing. That can have a huge impact on a kid in that moment. But then as they become an adult, that teaches them what's the worth of emotions and emotional intelligence. And if people are taught that empathy is bad, and emotions are bad, and crying is bad, and we shouldn't do this stuff, and you should be strong and don't show emotions or whatever, then there's a lot of baggage that they're working through. And just talking about it sometimes can help people open their own eyes, if that makes sense. Like just listening and letting them go through their own journey and sort of being there asking questions. I think that's the strategy that I would try to follow. Does that help? Does that make sense?
Daniel Stillman:
That's so insidious, Brian. I like that. Empathize with them until they crack.
Brian Pagán:
Yes. Kill them with kindness.
Daniel Stillman:
Kill them with... Well, yeah. Yeah. Jim?
Jim Burke:
Yes, sir.
Daniel Stillman:
What's on your mind? What's important for you to [crosstalk 00:39:15]?
Jim Burke:
So I want first, Daniel, I want to thank you for allowing us to come into your space and be part of this. This is awesome. As I read through Brian's book, there's a lot of things that I absolutely loved about the way that it was set up, because it was... It started with that diagram that you put up Daniel, the circle diagram. And the thing that I loved about that was it was more than, had me thinking that it's more than the hexagons for design thinking. By doing connection, when you look through, and I say the hexagons because when you go through empathize design, ideate, prototype, test, what you're talking about with empathy is really about a glue that binds those together. Because if you actually go through and if you're in academia and you're going through what's a part of ideate? What's a part of prototype? What's a part of test? Underneath everything is the connection that you're talking about, trying to connect with that user that you're designing to. So I love the fact that that, that circular diagram allowed us to be more than.
Jim Burke:
The other, the part that led then to the, I think it was an earlier chapter that you had which resonated with me, which was the product market fit side. I'm one of the denizens of Strategyzer and their Value Prop Canvas, and the Business Model Canvas. And the thing as a facilitator that I always... Not that I struggle with. I struggle with being in sessions where it's poorly facilitated, where it goes, "Oh, here's the Value Prop Canvas and we have the product, and we have the pains that people are doing. And here's your pain reliever, and the jobs that people do. And connect the dots and the skies will part and you'll have this thing because you filled out the rubric, therefore it must be so." When I start seeing that, and I loved your line in there. I loved creative empathy helps us achieve this by surfacing latent people's needs. Are there any suggestions that you would make on how to help surface those product market fit needs as you're designing, whether it's prompts or more probing questions?
Brian Pagán:
Both prompts and probing questions, I think... Yeah. So basically, everything in the proximity section, all the techniques in there and some of the ones in the team section as well, of course, but as a designer, working on something like myself, if I would be working like that, then I would try to use those techniques from the proximity session to be able to move myself into that head space or that emotional space while I'm actually designing something.
Brian Pagán:
So in the book I tell a story about when I was designing the interface, the UI for a breastfeeding tracker, for example. And I never breastfed. I never will breastfeed. It's not an experience that I have a lot of proximity with. But by doing this, it's a very simple exercise, but a free writing and character thing. Basically, I wrote... My acting coach gave me this exercise to pretend that I'm a new mom and I should write a letter to my newborn child. And that helped me really get into the head space of what it's like to be a new mom, a new parent who might be having some kind of anxieties around like, "Am I doing this right? Am I going to... I don't want to make you sick. You're such a fragile thing. I don't want you... I want to take care of you and I really love you, but I'm also scared. Like you're such a, you know, kind of thing."
Brian Pagán:
And just understanding that as part of my design process really helped me connect with the already existing research material that was there, but then on a much deeper, much more emotional level, so that it gave me not only the insight that things needed to be a lot simpler than I thought with the UI itself. But it also gave me a lot more confidence to fight for that simplicity within the team.
Brian Pagán:
And to give a very concrete example of this, at the bottom of those tracking screens in the app, there was a push to have content there, like articles that people could read. The assumption was that a mom while she's breastfeeding, wants to look at articles on her phone because she's bored or whatever. I thought, no, there's nothing boring about breastfeeding. It can be a very stressful thing. There's so much going on. We need to take this content out. We need to put the content in another place, serve it in a different way. And that one technique gave me sort of the ammunition and the ability to actually get that stuff taken out and placed in a more appropriate place. Does that answer your question?
Jim Burke:
Oh yeah. Yeah, it does. Thank you so much.
Brian Pagán:
Cool. Thank you.
Daniel Stillman:
Just to turn the crank on that a little bit, two things. One, I think that speaks to Chantel's question a little bit that one of the most powerful ways to create change is to have people get more proximity where the challenge is happening. And I've definitely done situations like this Chantel, where you bring people into the call center and they actually watch and listen while they go through it. And it's you increase the proximity. It's much harder to ignore what's going on.
Daniel Stillman:
But there's another thing which I really wanted to make sure we talked about, which is the first, second, and third person shifts that happen through the process. And when it comes to facilitating this process for others, Jim, which is what you're talking about specifically, like how do I help create a space where this can happen? The writing, the free writing is going back into the first person. It's not, she does this. She does that. She does this. It's trying to internalize it from the I do this. I do that. And even though I think there's some risks of stereotyping and not being, oversimplifying, it seems like making that intentional shift to the first person is a really important part of the connection step in creative empathy, like going back into the, like, to really inhabit.
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely. And that's exactly what that connection phase is all about, is really stepping into that world, becoming that person on some level. And whether it's in your head or whether it's as part of a simulator or something, it really personalizes it for yourself so that you really feel that connection. Indeed. Wow, you put it really wonderfully. Crap. I should put that in the book.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, Erin's moved locations, which means it's almost time for us to part. We only have a couple of minutes left, and I didn't design the close, which is kind of hilarious. Brian, is there anything else that we haven't asked you that we should ask you or anything else you want the people here or at home to know? That's the best I got right now.
Brian Pagán:
I'll say one last thing. It's a little bit more general than just from the book, but it's something that underpins everything in my entire life. So I'm convinced that every single choice that we make as people can be reduced to love versus fear. And the more we choose fear, the more easy it becomes to keep choosing fear. And the more we choose love, the easier it turns into keeping choosing love, or to keep choosing love. And the choice to listen, the choice to empathize with another person, the choice to be vulnerable and resonate and connect with another human being, it's that's a choice of love. And I want to help everyone that I possibly can to facilitate them in choosing love a lot more. Yes. Oh yes. It's all... That's the best. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Chantel has put on her heart sunglasses for those at home.
Brian Pagán:
Heart sunglasses.
Daniel Stillman:
And more Baby Yoda.
Brian Pagán:
Do love, you should.
Daniel Stillman:
So Brian, isn't this true that you do... So other things that people should know about you, which we didn't talk about. You do workshops on this stuff for teams and organizations, helping people get better at this.
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
Can people get a paperback version of the book? I know you sent me one, which was very sweet of you. Can they buy it from someplace else if they want to get it?
Brian Pagán:
I have a very strict pay what you want if you want policy for the paper book. So if you want a paper copy, just email me your address. I'll send it to you. And inside will be a little piece of paper with the QR code that if you want to make a donation or pay something... Those are another heart glasses. Oh man. That if you feel like giving something, you can, but it's totally optional. I really want this to be like a pay what you want if you want sort of give me what you think this is worth kind of scenario. And yes, I do give workshops on this for larger teams, smaller teams, at events, in-house like for companies, lots of trainings and stuff. Yeah. I definitely. It's a lot of fun too.
Daniel Stillman:
And people can find you at the URL that you're going to specify now.
Brian Pagán:
Thegreatness.studio, at The Greatness Studio, or especially for creative empathy, it's just creativeempathy.eu.
Daniel Stillman:
There you go. Easy. Well, with two minutes to spare, Chantel, Erin, Jim, what's one word you're checking out with?
Jim Burke:
Excited.
Chantel Botha:
Bold with joy. Thank you, Brian. I loved this conversation.
Daniel Stillman:
That's five words, but we'll allow it. Erin, what are you checking out with?
Erin Warner:
Oh, the positive residence of detachment for the holistic picture.
Daniel Stillman:
That's a good tattoo. I'm in for it. Brian, thank you so much for making time to have this conversation. Erin, Chantel, Jim, thanks for lending your brains to this delicious soup. This is really delightful. What a nice way to start my day. So thank you very much, everyone.
Brian Pagán:
Thank you all. This was amazing. I appreciate it.
Jim Burke:
Thank you all for having us. Thank you so much.
Chantel Botha:
Thank you.
Jim Burke:
Thank you, Brian.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you, Brian.
Jim Burke:
Fantastic to meet you and be part of this.
Brian Pagán:
Absolutely. Thank you very much. Let's stay in touch.
Jim Burke:
Will do.
Daniel Stillman:
I'll call scene. And scene.
Brian Pagán:
And scene. Thank you all. Amazing. I appreciate it. So cool.
Daniel Stillman:
Thanks, Brian. All right. Have a good day, everyone.
Jim Burke:
Take care.
Erin Warner:
So cool to get to talk to the author, so thank you very much for this opportunity.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you.
Brian Pagán:
And if you want a paper copy, let me know. Really. I'll send it. It's all good.
Erin Warner:
I think I do. I think I need to read it again, but thank you.
Brian Pagán:
Thanks.
Erin Warner:
Thanks, Daniel.
Daniel Stillman:
Thanks Brian. Talk to you soon. Hey, man. Thanks for doing that.
Brian Pagán:
Thanks for all-