Empathy, Experience, and Design

If you asked me to write down the words I associate with design, my list would probably go a little like this: fashion, create, product, consume, material, stuff, art, buy, shop, desire.

Burke approaches his teaching through the lens of design thinking. Because of my imaginary list of word associations, I wrestled with this notion as he likened the work of teachers to the work of someone creating a product. I did not take issue with this approach, but I noticed immediately I had preconceived notions about “design.” Burke takes a soft approach to design. It appears by the old age of 22, I was too cynical to appreciate or even understand his ideas at first. This is a result of my present dislike and discomfort of the attitudes of consumerism in America. By imagining my work in the classroom as creating a product (that intends to evoke an experience), I found myself pulling back from the wisdom Burke was offering.

Yet the more I read, I started to think that maybe I wouldn’t be so disgusted by consumerism if every actual product designer followed Burke’s steps. Has Jeff Bezos heard of this stuff before? It is because his first proposed step is not about design or the experience or the product, it is about empathy. And that is something I can always get behind. My core belief about teaching is that the core of teaching must be empathy. In this way, our kids are not customers and consumers, but bright beings whom we try our very best to anticipate their needs and we do this through empathy. That is why in any approach or methodology, empathy must be both our vehicle and our driver. Or perhaps, it is our empathy that sits in the driver’s seat and gives us directions.

Empathy is what will lead us to the experiences we intend to create. Oftentimes, I find people get this switched around, that experiences generate our empathy. While experiences certainly can expand our capacity to see, hear, and know one another; it is in the empathy we extend without hesitation that allows us to mutually and eagerly experience, connect, and grow alongside one another. That is why empathy is the only possible first step to take with design thinking (or any thinking for that matter). Empathy allows us to imagine a more true and beautiful vision for our classroom. This is what separates design thinking from the input/output binary. It removes binaries altogether because like Burke said, “I began to see our work as designing not units and handouts, but experiences that, through the principles of design thinking, could be made more effective, more engaging, more instructive” (Burke 3).

Through this approach, Burke begins to deconstruct the norms and notions attached to writing and instead frame ways in which our students can not only put pen to paper, but truly experience writing. He proposes these steps as key to design thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Yet I think these are not steps, but a never ending cycle in which our final outcome (experience) repeatedly informs our empathy, thus repeating the cycle again and again. Because this is not about a final product, but an experience. Our experiences and empathy can and should bleed into one another and melt into the fiber of our classroom each and every moment.