Impact Matters

Impact Matters: How to Design with Empathy and Leave Your Biases Behind

Impact Matters: How to Design with Empathy and Leave Your Biases Behind

Alexandra Lung, Pivotal Labs

Originally presented: September 19, 2019
Watch time: 1 hour, 1 minute

Access the Webcast

"The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit." 

Empathy requires us to put aside our culture, ideas and worldview in order to truly understand other peoples’ experiences. But most of the times, empathy is blinded by our own biases. As Product Managers and Product Designers we are trapped in assumptions and in the need to be right and it constantly hurts our view on the world around us and the impact of the products we are building. 

At Pivotal we build great products that have positive impact. And what makes a product great is not simply listening to the user. It is hearing the user with empathy and without biases. And acknowledging and eliminating biases is one of the hardest and most important tasks when designing and building products today and we can all continuously get better at it.

Take part in this session and become more aware of how you ask questions, you listen and interpret the information that you hear. I will also tell a series of stories on how we improved product design through empathy and I will go trough the traits of an empathic observer and the tools that we can use to gain a deep understanding of the people for whom we are designing.


About the Presenter

Alexandra Lung

Alexandra Lung is a product leader and a digital transformation expert who’s been in the game for more than 10 years.

Originally from Romania where she worked as a consultant in new business launch. Previously held positions in marketing, communication, product strategy and development and consulting in digital transformation. She's been building products for years touching various phases of the product lifecycle: user research, business insights, market analysis, financing, product vision, strategy and roadmapping. Alexandra was listed in the top women in Product in Europe 2018 and the elite business women to follow in 2019.

She is focused on helping companies transform the way they build software. She’s a result-driven expert who has extensive knowledge in finding product market fit and gathering deep understanding of the user in order to build a product people will love. She also shares her know-how and stories through talks and workshop all over the world and she mentors and coaches product professionals. 

Pivotal is a company that turns 100-year old banks and 1000-person IT business, into modern, adaptive and fast-changing companies. It teaches new ways of learning, creates a culture of innovation and make the most of your data.

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