Welcome back. This is week three and we're in session number three and this session is about empathy. And I base myself on a very good Harvard business review article by Dorothy Leonard and Geoffrey Rayport, Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. So let's begin with a definition. What's the difference between empathy and sympathy? What is empathy? Empathy is a word based on two Greek words. Empatheia, en and pathos, feeling and in. That means the projection of your personality into the personality of another person to understand him or her better. This is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy is we feel affinity toward other people, they have some sadness and we feel sorry for them. But empathy is actually feeling as other people do and empathy is an important way to come up with creative ideas. Let me give you some examples about how empathic design works. Empathy is important, because we often hear the slogan listening to your customers. But customers are really not good at telling us what they really need, because we are so good at overcoming our challenges, the shortcoming of existing products. There are so many problems with existing products and services and we just manage, we learn to manage with them. So, when you ask people what they really need, they find it hard to verbalize what those needs are. So how do you empathize, how do you overcome this? You watch people and you feel as they do, you become them. And the best thing, of course is when you yourself are a customer for your own product and you really need the thing that you're trying to invent. Anthropologists have a method they call the participant observer. That means when you study a tribe or a culture, you actually live with them and you become part of the tribe. Become part of the tribe of your potential customers and really learn to empathize with their needs in that fashion. So here are some stories or a case study and with regard to IDEo, which is a a Palo Alto industrial design company. I'll come back to that later and we'll talk a bit more about IDEO's method, but let's go back to the Intuit company. And the idea that they came up with, that led to their eventual success in developing the Quicken software. You'll recall that Quicken is software for managing your checkbook, for writing checks and keeping track of your outcome, outlay and income and so on. So Intuit developed a version of empathic design. It was called follow me home and here's how it worked. Intuit managers, including the founder, Scott. Scott and his senior managers observed customers as they bough Quicken software. Now in those days, you bought software, shrink wrapped in a store, like package it. Today, we download it. In those days, you bought it in the store. So Scott Cook and his managers observed customers and then they approached the customer and said, we are from the company from Intuit and we make the Quicken software. We'd like to observe how you use it, will you agree and return for a nice gift to allow us to observe how you use software. And they literally, followed people home and watched them as they removed the cellophane, loaded on their computers and began to use it. And the rules were that they weren't supposed to intervene just observe and sometimes, they even videotaped and they discovered something very important and very unusual. Hey, people are not using our software the way we intended. We intended our software to be a check writing software, but people are using the product to manage their small businesses. America has millions and millions of small businesses and you have to keep books for the small business and it be expensive. So people have discovered that they can use Quicken software to actually keep the books of their businesses and record their outlays and their incomes and keep everything, beautifully in order. This is not what this software was intended for, but because it followed me home, people, the managers, the entrepreneurs, Scott Cook and others, realized that they had a huge market they weren't even aware of. People created that market not the company, Intuit. Of course, they were able to tailor their software in that direction and eventually, achieve great success. And to which diversified, they now have a major piece of software that helps you do your tax return, but the story here is empathic design. Observe your customers, see how they use your product. Sometimes, they will astonish you in the creative ways that they use it. So let's do a bit of action learning, let's see if we can apply this idea of empathy. Think about the following activities that every one of us does almost every day. We drive to work. We have breakfast. We send email. We check our voicemail. We pack our clothes. We travel. Buy a present, we prepare our tax returns. Take our medicine, see a doctor. We dress a small child, we change a diaper. We look for [LAUGH] a mate, we do all of these daily things. In the daily activities that you engage in, where are the challenges? Where are the needs? Where are the gaps between what is available now and what you would like to have available? What could make your life easier, your own life? Empathize with yourself. And by empathizing with yourself, of course, you empathize with a great many people who have similar needs to you. So try this piece of action learning. Try empathy. Try to feel exactly, as if you were other people and identify needs and get product ideas from empathic design. That ends session three and I look forward to seeing you for session four.