[Book] Practical Empathy

Practical Empathy: For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work
by Indi Young
Rosenfeld Media, 2015

Synopsis
Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully.

The author
For the past 20 years, Indi Young has been pioneering ways to understand customers and employees in order to support them better. Most organizations have developed awareness and expertise at gathering big data the numbers that track what and how people have done things. These same organizations, however, are inexpert at understanding why. The messy and divergent reasoning and motivations that drive people s decisions are what Indi helps you tune in. She is expert at gathering the thoughts that lie deeper than simple preferences, opinions, and desires. And she is expert at helping you solidify patterns and sort through the wavelengths to focus on particular channels so you can support people in more powerful ways. In 2001 Indi was one of the founders of the user experience agency Adaptive Path, which has provided leadership for the experience and strategy design field. During her career, Indi has worked with clients in many industries, including higher education, and has seamlessly embedded with teams at multi-national organizations as well as with tiny start-ups.

Chapters
Chapter 1: Business Is Out of Balance
Chapter 2: Empathy Brings Balance
Chapter 3: Put Empathy to Work
Chapter 4: A New Way to Listen
Chapter 5: Make Sense of What You Heard
Chapter 6: Apply Empathy to What You Create
Chapter 7: Apply Empathy with People at Work
Chapter 8: Apply Empathy Within Your Organization
Chapter 9: Where Do You Go from Here?

Extra
Presentation by Indi Young at UX Lausanne (May 23, 2014 – 46:45)