How to Do Empathetic Designing

                                                                                         

Let us say you are a designer. Your task is to create the designs for a postcard marketing strategy that is going to involve direct mailing. You consider yourself an expert in the field. You think you know exactly what people want.

Perhaps you are right. The problem is how often something like ego can get in the way of good work.

Some people might very well be the best at their jobs and have nothing left to learn. In the world of design, I think this statement is a lot harder to make true. You are designing ads for the customers who are going to be changing. Not every company has the exact same customer base for years. If you do, you are not expanding enough to draw in more people.

Because the customer base changes it becomes more important for a designer to really understand the people he is designing the ads to draw in. How well do you understand the feelings of your company’s customer base?

People like to feel a certain amount of passion within a work, no matter what kind of work it is. Even with something as simple as postcard printing, I can feel whether or not the person who designed it really cared about their work, and whether or not they knew anything about the people they were trying to target.

There are a number of ways for designers to stay in touch with the world they are trying to draw in. Get out and observe people. Find out what they enjoy doing, the things they cherish in life, and who they really are as people.

Ad designers are not the same as other artists in that they are working for other people. The painter only has to please him or herself, whereas the person handling the postcard marketing is trying to please someone else.

The kinds of emotions the ad designer needs to put in are not going to simply be their own. You need to really have empathy for everyone else in order to channel his or her wants and needs into your work.

Odds are as soon as you decide you have become an expert in your field you have also cut yourself off from the very people you are trying to connect with. This is not about you, after all, but the customers.

Unlike simple market research, channeling that emotion into the work is more than just understanding what interests a person has. You need to feel those interests yourself and understand exactly what draws them to one activity or another.

I know this is not going to be an easy task, and there is a reason why I see so many postcards or other marketing material that feel hollow and forced. However, every so often I come across those ads that feel like a real artist made them. They may not be shown in a museum, but the powerful advertisements, the ones where the artist could truly emphasize with the people they were targeting, are a thing to marvel at.

About the author:
Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in the printing industry, particularly, postcard printing, postcard marketing and postcard mailing.

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