“Empathy is a motivation oriented towards the other”, Daniel Batson (Batson, C. D., Fultz, J., & Schoenrade, P. (1987). Distress and Empathy: Two Qualitatively Distinct Vicarious Emotions with Different Motivational Consequences. Journal of Personality, 55, 19-39)
The moment you aim your creative effort towards improving someone’s life, you get yourself on the productive path of user-centered business. The person behind the product/service brought closer to the ‘receiving end’. Now, that is from the successful business point of view. In a deeper context of ‘understanding the other’, we are faced with the notion of empathy.
Watching Jeremy Rifkin’s video “Empathic Civilisation” in the last Design Thinking class have triggered challenging ideas on what our society needs. I particularly want to focus on one Rifkin’s statement about empathy, which I greatly support and agree with – the suggestion that our ability to empathise stems from our prime drive ‘to belong’. As much as the post-modern (or are we now in ultra-post-modern one?) society have been praising the individual and the ‘every man for himself’ motto, turns out human nature salutes collective effort and the safety of a communal framework. We actually don’t like to drift around like single units – we need to relate, share and belong. Hence, we empathise with those communities/groups which we regard as something we could be (or are) part of – often transcending the ‘national’, ‘regional’, ‘ethnical’ concepts in favour of ‘human race’ as bigger common denominator. Our consciousness might have changed or developed over the centuries, but the collective drive was never completely routed out. ‘New-age’ tribes – more complex and extended (no longer defined by space and proximity), but tribes nonetheless? By chance, I came across Seth Godin’s talk ‘The Tribes We lead’ , discussing the revival of the ‘tribal’ social unit and the collective power to inflict change.
So being empathic professionals is really about understanding the others – points where s/he’s coming from, needs or problems s/he might have. Extend it and it is about realising that you might not be the only one with that particular kind of problem, going through a particular experience. For the USER model introduced by Corrine, empathy is integral – the designer at the bottom needs to be able to connect with and understand the ones s/he is designing for. But how do you actually get to abolish the distance between the designer and the user?
Essentially, empathy could be brought down to putting yourself in other person’s shoes. So you’ve found your ‘user’ and identified their possible ‘needs’, but have you got the ‘insight’ of what you (and your users actually) are dealing with? Bringing any problem-solving into practice, we are taught, could be achieved through different ways, where you attempt to adopt the user’s point of view: role play, substitution, reacting, etc. Having experienced the problem/need you are no longer distant from it – you have empathized.
How I was looking for empathy for my passion and came up with a brief for a possible solution to a need
OK, so the task that came with this blog was to identify a particular passion for something and connect with people through it, with the vision to outline solutions for any existing issues/needs within that plane. Definitely easier said than done. Problem being I seem to be passionate about too many things and pinpointing one (which, ideally, would also come into play for the potential business set-up later in the course) to focus is really a challenge.
Deep breath and I started my brainstorming. I am passionate about both the film and arts medium. I like to create stories – visual, written, imprinted, doesn’t matter. I like to bring those stories to life and gift them to a suitable audience. Regarding the actual production process, I admire and cherish every collective creative effort – you’d be a fool for thinking you can do it all on your own (even paintings need gallery walls to hang on).
Thinking about passion was facilitated by my personal experience in the field: runner in a post production house, internships at production, sales and distribution agents, events management for festivals, illustration, then eventually film producing. Working on a freelance basis is a string of lows and highs – the former being largely due to the fact that as a ‘fresh talent’ you tend to be restricted to doing mainly unpaid internships and ‘collaborations’ (a widely used word amongst the so-called ‘independent’ –read, with no financial back-up of any sorts – filmmakers). Furthermore, it’s not only the getting money for your services – investing in productions and projects seems to be an issue in itself (how much funding is there for every single piece of work under the sun?).
Industry issues and needs began to formulate in my head – funding, exposure, etc. While thinking about the current needs of those involved in the industry, I’ve identified the ‘essentials’ behind producing any kind of ‘creative product’:
- concept/idea
- financial resources
- ‘talent’ (e.g. the artist, the actress, the camera operator)
- audience
Lacking any of the above renders your product/service obsolete. I decided to switch my attention to the ‘talent’ in particular, because those are the people I mostly relate to. This is also a peculiar two-fold category, doubling up as ‘users’ or/and ‘designers’.
Visual support of the shambolic brainstorming could be found below:
Brainstorming on Empathy Experiment with My Passion
Media industry ‘talent’ often suffers from lack of work opportunities (note: paid work) At the same time, it’s not just finding work – for the ones who have a project on their hands, sourcing out talent is equally a key issue. Job-hunting nowadays is done mostly through the easy and accessible way of online recruitment sites (the other majority is surely done by ‘word of mouth’ and handy recommendations, so people networking is as key as ever). There’s already a lot of social/industry networks, e.g. Shooting People, as well as professional societies one could join to utilise their employment opportunities, e.g. BAFTA, WFTV (Women In Film & TV). It’s all good but those sites and networks only serve their purpose if you already know where to look, i.e. you know of their existence (how you’ve found out is not the point). But when you’re just starting out, do you know where to look for advice and resources? Students and industry newcomers – do they know what steps to take towards their career progress? Half of them seem to be absolutely clueless and end up testing out way too many things until finding ‘a glove that fits’(I’ve been there myself). Being ‘fresh talent’ makes you lost in terms of how to go on about getting your foot in the industry door.
With all that in mind and having a by-chance recent conversation with my partner about his sister not seeming to have a clear ‘plan of action’ for after graduating with media studies, I went on to get a further insight on the situation. I’ve spent a day talking to second and third-year Media and Arts undergraduate students from both Kingston and Goldsmiths, trying to compile their fears and expectations of ‘the real world’. I then hang on to the wide-spread agreement that professional guidance is essential to a successful kick-start – to any career, really.
I’ve empathised with the students and industry newcomers. I decided I’d like to save them the trial-and-error routine and provide them with a solution, a tool of sorts.
Coming out with my solution, I clarified for myself a few points, from which it was easier to sift through relevant ideas. Here’s what I found:
- It should be something I know a lot about (first-hand experience?)
- It should be an aspect that could be explored and dealt with by independent individuals (i.e. the Designer Me + any supporting friends/colleagues/believers), rather than solely by organizations & governmental bodies (e.g. although I can identify the need for changes in the arts & media funding systems, I cannot re-design them myself)
- Must have users in need of that particular ‘It’
Based on the way ‘Talent Booking’ agencies operate – in terms of not charging clients directly but sharing the profits from their work – and the multitude of online information portals, my proposed solution comes in the form of an ‘Ultimate’ platform of assistance and resources. An ultimate creative employment ‘handbook/guide’ for industry newcomers, which holds all the useful (they must have proven to be useful) sites to go to, companies to approach (with the best person to address), tips on getting things done. It would simultaneously provide opportunities for employers to ‘book’ their ‘talents’, with the ‘agency’s’ aid to ‘recruit’ the best ones and put them in touch with established industry contacts – as mentioned before, word of mouth and a timely recommendation is utterly important.
Note: Although I talk about predominantly the film industry, the suggested product/service is by no means for the merit of one field users only. In fact, it should really be a wide collaboration between the arts, music, and visual media sphere, complemented with any other creative industry expertise. It’s aimed to bring together trusty experts from different creative/cultural background and skillful newcomers in need of professional guidance or employment chance. It’s about sharing and improving.
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