Tag: Empathy

070: Harnessing Life Experiences in Design with Shaheena Attarwala

User Defenders podcast
Empathy
070: Harnessing Life Experiences in Design with Shaheena Attarwala
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Shaheena Attarwala defends a woman’s right to design her own future, especially in the face of fierce adversity and opposition. She champions living ruthlessly amid oppressive whims and societal precepts. She’s a magnet that brings the issues forward and carries the water for anyone who dreams of raising their standards and never settling for status quo expectations. She’ll persuade you to hunker down, prove your grit, and rattle some cages if you have to. This episode is not just about design. So make your way or step aside. It’s time to hear her metaphoric journey, examine your own life, and bring more awareness to poverty and oppression. In other words…sh*t’s about to get real!

Shaheena is a UX Design Manager at Zoomcar, India’s first self-drive platform. At Zoomcar, Shaheena leads the UX team to build a definitive, hyper-local, multi-modal urban mobility transport solution for India and emerging economies, with close collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Born to a conservative family in a village of Uttar Pradesh to growing up in the grimy slums of Mumbai, her repugnant experiences propelled her to reduce ‘bad’ human experiences by creating more impactful and empowering solutions through a seamless union of human-centred design, curiosity, intuition and logical reasoning. In this journey of adversity, Shaheena is the first generation in her clan to rebel her way towards educating herself and changing mindsets about a girl child.

Shaheena harnesses her life experiences while building solutions. Living a frugal life has taught her empathy and compassion for fellow humans and the planet.

She’s passionate about human behaviour and cross-cultural experiences and loves reaching out to people and sharing perspectives, for she believes that is a sincere way to learn and form sustainable communities!

Apart from making the digital world a better place by building better experiences every day, she also endeavours to reshape the lives of the less fortunate by blending design, technology and her legal skills. Over the years, her initiatives to create a positive impact has received recognition from the United Nations.

Fun fact: She loves children’s bedtime stories even now. She asks close friends, her mom or siblings to tell her stories. If that’s not possible, she puts some online to listen to, and falls fast asleep 🙂

  • Origin Story (3:56)
  • A Kid’s View (6:25)
  • Oppression In Cultures (8:42)
  • Ah-Ha Moments (11:38)
  • Family Relations (13:48)
  • How Did You Find Design? (16:52)
  • What’s Driving You? (20:53)
  • Design Influence (22:26)
  • Legal Skills and Design (33:04)
  • Gaining Empathy (35:29)
  • Don Norman (40:59)
  • Teaching Curiosity (45:45)
  • Harnessing Life Experiences (59:36)
  • Story Banks (1:02:49)
  • Design Superpower (1:06:46)
  • Design Kryptonite (1:07:20)
  • UX Superhero Name (1:08:32)
  • Habit of Success (1:08:58)
  • Recommended Book (1:10:15)
  • Taking Risks (1:12:24)
  • Best Advice (1:14:26)

Continue reading 070: Harnessing Life Experiences in Design with Shaheena Attarwala

061: Empathy as a Design Superpower with Jason Ogle

User Defenders podcast
Empathy
061: Empathy as a Design Superpower with Jason Ogle
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Jason Ogle proves that empathic design is not only possible, but essential in creating life-changing products and services. He enlightens us to our seldom talked about mirror neurons and the critical role they play in user testing. He shines a spotlight on incredibly powerful and moving examples of empathy in design. He also teaches us how empathy can not only be taught and learned, but practiced, because being great designer begins and ends with being a great human.

Jason Ogle is human, not dancer. He fails early and learns often. He’s a growth-minded, avid reader and listener whose vehicle is a rolling university, and a biz-minded, strategic designer who loves to make life better for his users. He’s a passionate user defender who fights for the users who are victims of bad design decisions. He’s an influential podcaster who uses the enchanting magic of audio to inspire and equip an audience of hungry and ambitious designers. He’s an evocative (often contrarian) writer who believeth in the power of the written word. He’s a self-aware and highly empathic servant-leader who believes that humans are so much more than resources. He’s also a loving husband, father of seven (one’s in heaven), and thankful believer who has a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Fun fact: He once had to get a manicure to be a hand-model for a tech ad, and he has a rare essay titled “Altars of Satan” given to him and signed by Eldridge Cleaver.

  • Intro Story (00:24)
  • What is Empathy? (5:04)
  • Mirror Neurons (9:14)
  • Still Face Experiment (11:17)
  • Mirror Neurons and Movies (15:59)
  • Inspiring Examples from IDEO (19:19)
  • Doug Dietz’s Empathy for Terminally Ill Children (23:35)
  • Margaret Hamilton’s Empathy for Apollo 11 (29:44)
  • Can We Grow in Empathy? (34:07)
  • Seth Godin Explaining Empathy (35:21)
  • Put Your Oxygen Mask on First (36:10)
  • Seth Godin on Faked Empathy (39:19)
  • Seth Godin on Being Indispensable in an AI World (40:57)
  • Empathy & Mindfulness (43:23)
  • Rise to the Empathy Challenge (45:55)

Continue reading 061: Empathy as a Design Superpower with Jason Ogle

Radical Empathy with Seth Godin

User Defenders podcast
Empathy
Radical Empathy with Seth Godin
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Seth Godin shows us what radical empathy looks like. He reminds us to do work that matters, for people who care by focusing on serving a minimum viable audience. He teaches us that the way to stay indispensable in our work is to do work where you can’t write down the steps. He also reveals how faked empathy is just as good as real empathy for the true professional acting ‘as if’.

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  • This is Marketing

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Seth Godin is the author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He’s also the founder of the altMBA and The Marketing Seminar, online workshops that have transformed the work of thousands of people. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth has founded several companies, including Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world. In 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. His latest book, What To Do When It’s Your Turn is now in its fifth printing, and his new book, This Is Marketing, comes out this November. A fun fact about Seth is he did the first generation UX for educational computer games in 1983…when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

  • Creating UX for Early Computer Games (4:23)
  • What Book Would the Seth Godin of the Industrial Revolution Write? (6:43)
  • How Do You Define Empathy? (9:30)
  • Why is Empathy Important in Doing Great Work? (12:01)
  • What’s Your Greatest Story of Empathy in Action? (14:50)
  • One of the Greatest Marketing Lessons Seth Ever Learned (18:44)
  • Status Over Empathy (25:07)
  • Empathy Learned the Hard Way (28:19)
  • What’s Your Best Advice in Building our Empathy Levels? (30:33)
  • Advice for Becoming Better Storytellers (32:51)
  • Are Our Smartphone Addictions Negatively Affecting our Empathy Levels? (34:27)
  • Seth’s Apple Rant (37:44)
  • Apple Could Solve the Texting & Driving Dilemma in 4 Minutes (If They Wanted To) (39:31)
  • How Do We Stay Indispensable In Our Work in an AI World? (41:16)
  • Faked Empathy is Just as Good as Real Empathy (43:59)
  • What Makes You Angry? (45:34)
  • Jason’s Blurb for Seth’s New Book “This is Marketing” (48:10)

Continue reading Radical Empathy with Seth Godin

048: Pick Yourself with Cassie McDaniel

User Defenders podcast
Personal Growth
048: Pick Yourself with Cassie McDaniel
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Cassie McDaniel inspires us to get away from the ‘pick me’ mindset, and to pick ourselves. She challenges us to be willing to kill our darlings so that something better can emerge. She teaches us the importance of knowing our values, but also embracing the fact that they are going to change. She also encourages us to not just do what we’re good at, but do what we enjoy.

Cassie McDaniel runs a small, ambitious, friendly design studio with her husband called Jane & Jury. As previous Design Director at the Mozilla Foundation, she led a team of designers on the organization’s advocacy and digital literacy fronts. She founded the interview series Women&&Tech and runs a creative event and workshop series called Paris Lectures. She grew up in Florida, jumped around in England, and is now based an hour outside Toronto in rural Ontario, where she is deeply invested in the roots she puts down into her community both locally and online. She’s both a national champion collegiate water polo player, and a published poet.

  • Secret Identity (8:27)
  • Origin Story (20:56)
  • Being Mozilla Foundation’s Design Director (24:09)
  • Biggest Failure (36:36)
  • Kill Your Darlings (40:24)
  • Design Superpower (52:54)
  • Habit of Success (62:59)
  • Invincible Resource (67:39)
  • Best Advice (70:33)

Continue reading 048: Pick Yourself with Cassie McDaniel

046: Good Design Favors the Curious with Joe Johnston

User Defenders podcast
Empathy
046: Good Design Favors the Curious with Joe Johnston
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Joe Johnston inspires us to embrace the superpowers of curiosity and empathy for our users and business owners. He motivates us to always stay curious, and ask why to get to the heart of the problem faster. He encourages us to make sure we use the shiny objects available to us to actually solve a problem.

Joe Johnston has over 18 years of digital experience with extensive knowledge creating digital and physical experiences. His skill set focuses on the user experience and the creation of these experiences to help clients quickly test & validate soultions. He’s adept at navigating the rapidly evolving and shifting technological landscape, making intuitive decisions amidst information-abundance, where sparse facts mingle loosely with data-drenched opinions. He’s completed a wide variety of projects, performing duties that include Experience Director/Advisor/Consultant, Digital Strategy, Experience Design,Service Design and front end development. He believes experience design is driven by moments of engagement, or touch points, between people, brands, ideas, emotions and memories that these moments create. My experience design philosophy is holistic in nature and takes into account all components required to create engaging and emotive experiences. Little known fact about Joe: He grew up on a farm, raising sheep during the day and hacking on a Commodore 64 at night.

  • “Merhl” Backstory (7:40)
  • Secret Identity (11:38)
  • Origin Story (13:46)
  • Empathy is Still Important (18:52)
  • Biggest Failure (24:46)
  • Design Leadership/Culture (28:41)
  • Awkward Testing Story (33:24)
  • Design Superpower (41:50)
  • Shiny Objects Syndrome (44:12)
  • UX of Ambient-Driven Experiences (50:46)
  • UX Superhero Name (56:14)
  • Habit of Success (57:11)
  • Invincible Resource (60:05)
  • Best Advice (61:00)
  • Contact Info (63:34)

Continue reading 046: Good Design Favors the Curious with Joe Johnston