[Sigia-l] Empathy

[Jorge Arango]

Chris:

> What do you think? Is it fair of us to claim "empathy" as a something that
> makes us special?

Your post reminds me of a very interesting hallway conversation at the
2005 IA Summit, about the exact issues you raise. Someone said that
even though there were people practicing IA who have backgrounds in
many diverse fields of study, most had a trait in common: empathy.

The point was that many design problems require that the designer
place him/herself in the other person's (in this case, the user's)
shoes, and that this is something that IAs (designers in general?) are
called to do more often than others. So perhaps this is a
self-selecting group of empathizers?

--
Jorge Arango
http://www.jarango.com