Building Empathy In Engineering Through User-Centered Design

Your solution is technically perfect. But something’s missing.” I said those words in a packed review meeting at Amazon Connect. The architecture on screen was brilliant, optimized, scalable, elegant. But the business stakeholders weren’t nodding. They were checking their phones. And I saw it clearly: the translation gap. Our engineering lead had built a masterpiece for the builder’s eye. But for the people funding it, using it, championing it? It was a beautiful book written in a language they couldn’t read. I recognized the moment instantly, because I’d lived it before. At Microsoft, I once pitched a technically flawless design to execs. The tech crowd applauded. The business side passed. Not because it didn’t work, but because it didn’t resonate. That was the moment I realized: Technical excellence without human understanding is just noise to the people who need to act. So at Amazon, we did something radical. We stopped the review. We didn’t add more slides. We asked a different question: “How does this change the day-to-day life of, a contact center agent ?” The next architecture proposal started with her story. The system didn’t just reduce latency. It made her feel respected. Trusted. Heard. That changed everything. From then on, we embedded empathy into engineering: •Engineers shadowed real users before writing code. •Every design doc started with a human narrative. •We built “empathy metrics” right alongside performance metrics. This wasn’t soft skills. This was integration intelligence: the ability to make technical brilliance humanly meaningful. If you lead engineering in the AI era, remember: Your best solutions won’t win if they don’t translate. Build systems that resonate, not just operate. Learn more in my book Metashift - chapter 7 #TechLeadership #AI #MetaShift #EngineeringExcellence #HumanCenteredDesign

Back when I was launching my startup eight years ago, I believed this wholeheartedly, and it remains true now as I develop #AI solutions: a deep understanding of the user journey underpins every successful AI roadmap. Forget about first playing around with AI or dreaming up revenue models in a vacuum. You start here: ✅ 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬: What tasks do they wish were easier, faster, or more intuitive? Where are they losing time, money, or energy? ✅ 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐔𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐭 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: How do they define success? What future are they hoping to build? What would make them say, "Finally, someone gets it"? Then, you work your way backwards from "the 𝒘𝒉𝒚" (user) to "the 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕" (product) to "the 𝒉𝒐𝒘" (tech). The solution might not be AI-driven at all! Let needs alone drive the solution. For product people, this may all seem obvious but greed reverses the flow from tech to user every time there's a hype cycle. Human greed is the most predictable force in the universe! Real impact starts with empathy, not excess compute. When you anchor your AI strategy in real human needs, everything else — model selection, infrastructure, UX — becomes clearer and more purposeful. It’s not about what’s possible with AI. It’s about what’s meaningful! If you’re not solving a real problem, you’re just shipping complexity disguised as innovation. And in a world flooded with AI hype, clarity is a competitive advantage. Start with the user. Stay with the user. Let that be your edge. #AIProductDesign #HumanCenteredAI

Design thinking isn’t a workshop. It’s a mindset.” Sure, your team can run all the sprints you want— Post sticky notes, brainstorm wild ideas, and host flashy workshops. >But if design isn’t embedded in your culture, you’re not doing innovation. You’re doing innovation theater. Here’s why that matters 1. Workshops surface ideas—but don’t replace systems. Design sprints are brilliant tools to jumpstart innovation. But one-off events aren’t a sustainable design practice. >A five-day sprint can spark new thinking. But without follow-through— Ideas gather dust. Learnings fade. Teams slip back into old habits. The Stanford d.school itself emphasizes: “Design thinking isn’t a checklist. It’s a way to approach every problem—iteratively, empathetically, and creatively.” 2. Great design happens upstream. If your designers are only brought in after strategy is set, or worse—just to polish the UI at the tail end— >You’ve already missed critical insight. Why? Because: 80% of product success is determined before a single pixel is drawn. Upfront research, empathy work, and problem framing are what unlock real value. 3. Design thinking must be woven into daily decisions. True design maturity isn’t: > Quarterly workshops > Yearly “innovation days” > Post-launch retros focused on what already went wrong It’s: > Product managers asking: “Do we really understand the user need here?” > Engineers pushing for inclusive, accessible builds as default > Leaders prioritizing discovery time just as much as delivery deadlines When design thinking lives in everyday conversations, you create a resilient, adaptable culture. And companies that do this well? Airbnb’s turnaround was sparked when its founders went back to basic user empathy. Spotify’s squad model is built on cross-functional teams with design embedded at the core. Even legacy orgs like IBM transformed by investing in enterprise-wide design adoption. >The red flag: If your org celebrates “design thinking” once a year, but ignores user-centered design in everyday execution, you’ve got a culture problem—not a creativity problem. >> The real win? True design maturity means embedding user-centeredness everywhere: Strategy. Roadmaps. Daily standups. KPIs. Design thinking stops being an “event”— and becomes the default operating system.

Here to there? Stay close to your users. Good design depends on understanding users at every step of the decision-making process. This week, I saw two teams handle this very differently. Company A Followed a step-by-step process through the company, with many internal decision points. At each stage, different people added input. While they did include some user feedback, it often got diluted as it moved up and down through layers of management. This made the design feel more focused on company opinions than actual user needs. Company B Instead of following the internal decision path, this team created a vline from users directly to the design, connecting early ideas to the final concept. A strong leader used UX metrics to integrate user insights at key points, cutting through layers of internal debate. Rather than involving every team at every step, they used feedback to guide decisions and inform the final direction. It’s easy to see which team moved faster and stayed closer to what users need. To build great design, from start to finish, companies need to include users throughout, not just at the beginning or end. Relying too much on internal opinions leads teams away from the real problems users face. When teams follow their instincts and use user feedback at every step, they build momentum and make smarter decisions without getting stuck in internal issues. That’s how great design gets done. #productdesign #uxmetrics #productdiscovery #uxresearch