CHAPTER 7 Designing Adaptive Interfaces
aesthetics; it has been about illuminating content and making it easier for
the consumer to accomplish key tasks. We design to solve problems.
To create truly exceptional designs, we must not only reduce the
friction inherent in completing a task, but we should make it (dare I say it)
fun! We must reconcile aesthetics with usability.We’re Empathetic
Design does not exist in a vacuum. It is not art on a wall. Designs are meant
for interaction. For use. And who is the user? Sometimes it’s us, but unless
we are lucky enough to spend all day building stuff that’s meant solely for
our own consumption, we are probably building for someone else.
It’s hard to design for someone else. After all, we’re complex creatures
with unique perspectives, objectives and needs. It’s incredibly difficult
to put aside our own biases and approach a problem from someone else’s
point of view.
Thankfully, however, we are hardwired with the capacity to do so.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Giacomo Rizzolatti and a group of
neurophysiologists in Parma, Italy, were studying the neurons that con-
trol hand and mouth actions. To test these neurons, the researchers would
place electrodes in the ventral premotor cortex of a macaque monkey and
record the firing of individual neurons as the macaque reached for peanuts
from a bowl.
Purely by happenstance, a macaque was still hooked up to the re-
corder when a research assistant walked into the room and grabbed a
peanut. Much to everyone’s surprise, the very same neurons fired when
the macaque saw the peanut plucked from the bowl as when the monkey
performed that same action. Through what have come to be known as mir-
ror neurons, the macaque was able to share in the experience, despite not
actually partaking in it. That’s the root of empathy.
“Empathy” stems from the Greek empatheia meaning state of emotion
and is defined by Merriam-Webster as: