Empathy is the capacity to recognize
feelings that are being experienced by another being.The
emotional capacity of a person, is to perceive and feel others emotions and
needs through the extension and reflection of one’s own experiences. Now, how
does this fit into the work and world of software design. That’s precisely this
blog post is going to deal with. I believe there is a higher purpose of one’s
effort inside and outside office space. There is a paramount need in the society,
given the fast paced nature of the world, to develop an emotional capacity to
be sentient about others need. This unique attribute of human nature, can be
applied in every other aspect of human endeavor for the betterment of society
and the goods that we consume.
Software Product design and architecture needs to align with the above idea, and developed with an ulterior goal of social aspect and impact. As we all know that there is more than one stakeholder for a software artifact. Consumers come from different segments in society and all walks of life. Be it developing/envisioning a software product or be it a maintainable code developed by a team or be it a document that targets a customer or be it an error that is returned to a layman user or be it an intuitive API design consumed by another team of developers or be it a GUI that’s developed for a group of users who are unaware of the fundamentals of computer, all of them need an empathetic guy who can put himself or herself in others shoe in trying to extend his emotions to empathize others world of complex necessities. Now this is where the context of empathy comes into the picture in the pursuit of software design and architecture.
Software Product design and architecture needs to align with the above idea, and developed with an ulterior goal of social aspect and impact. As we all know that there is more than one stakeholder for a software artifact. Consumers come from different segments in society and all walks of life. Be it developing/envisioning a software product or be it a maintainable code developed by a team or be it a document that targets a customer or be it an error that is returned to a layman user or be it an intuitive API design consumed by another team of developers or be it a GUI that’s developed for a group of users who are unaware of the fundamentals of computer, all of them need an empathetic guy who can put himself or herself in others shoe in trying to extend his emotions to empathize others world of complex necessities. Now this is where the context of empathy comes into the picture in the pursuit of software design and architecture.
