No…no…no…a thousand times no. You keep your shoes on and you walk over and you LISTEN to other people as they tell their stories as they tell you why they do what they do. And you reconcile that with what you know about humanity and if you don’t know about humanity and why humans do what they do collectively you learn. You listen to understand and communicate, you keep THEIR voice, story, expressive need in mind when you design.

And I know people are going to say stuff about empathy here but that’s a very long blog post because most people do not do the work necessary to have empathy. What you’re describing is sympathy and in my opinion that doesn’t lead to understanding anything…only thinking you do.

People half the time don’t understand why they do things so putting yourself in their shoes just means you’ve got ill-fitting shoes on.

Human centered design at its core is having a deep understanding of human behavior. Talking to people helps deepen that understanding in the context of design. Talking with people also exposes your own biases. Empathy is about changing the way YOU show up in a space, place and time, it’s about YOUR behavior, bias and power dynamic having to be dismantled before you can even begin to understand a person’s subconscious thoughts and motivations.

Putting yourself in another’s shoes is a short cut that can lead to bad design. It’s a poor substitute for what you really should be doing … Letting people speak for themselves. Listening for an opportunity to make their lives better.