[Sigia-l] Empathy

[richard_dalton at vanguard.com]

We've been reading and using a book at work recently called "Now, Discover
your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton which identifies 34
Strengths (actually they're better called Talents) which everyone lives
their life by - they suggest that these things can't really be taught or
improved upon (although you can mitigate weaknesses somewhat). Empathy is
one of them. Check the book out - its quite interesting. 

        Richard 


sigia-l-bounces at asis.org wrote on 09/01/2006 11:17:41 AM:

> I would counter this and say, "Not all Information Architects are
Designers".
> Maybe that is where the split is, but the again this is NOT black and
> white at all.
> 
> All I was saying is that Designers in their tools and practice often
> invoke literally "empathy". Anyone who has used Goal-Directed Design
> or Contextual Inquiry have come across the term before. It is the
> primary reason given for doing personas through any methodology, etc.
> 
> Now, Chris brings up a VERY interesting point. At least my reading of
> it led me to, "Can empathy be taught, or is it just a personality
> trait?"
> 
> -- dave
> 
> 
> On 9/1/06, Jorge Arango <jarango at jarango.com> wrote:
> > 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
> > ------------
> > When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> > *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
> >
> > Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> >
> > Most presentations/papers and posters have been loaded to the IA 
> Summit 06 website:
> >
> > http://iasummit.org/2006/conferencedescrip.htm
> > http://iasummit.org/2006/posters.htm
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________
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> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> David (Heller) Malouf
> dave.ixd at gmail.com
> http://synapticburn.com/
> ------------
> When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
> 
> Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> 
> Most presentations/papers and posters have been loaded to the IA 
> Summit 06 website:
> 
> http://iasummit.org/2006/conferencedescrip.htm
> http://iasummit.org/2006/posters.htm
> 
> 
> 
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