Find out why empathy is a core business value—and why, far from being a “mushy” emotion, it’s the key to designing user interactions that result in increased sales and satisfied customers.

There’s a shift happening in the world. If you pay attention, you can see it in the way that Silicon Valley is building the new products that will change our lives, in the way that established businesses are operating and in the way governments are deciding to interact with us.

Some of these organizations are learning the hard way, whereas others are making decisive moves. But all of this points to an inescapable fact: there’s a gap in empathy between these organizations and us, as audiences, citizens, consumers and individuals.

What’s the empathy gap?

It’s the gap in understanding between an organization and its audience. A recent example of the empathy gap might be Google’s introduction of new consumer technology like Google Glass, an augmented reality piece of headgear that provides a constant (and arguably useful) connection to the internet in the corner of your vision. But Google’s Glass also comes with a camera that can take stills and video, and the product ignited controversy when people felt the device violated social norms by appearing to encourage users to record others in their vicinity.

In the case of Google Glass, it’s easy to mount a defense: there was nothing different, its proponents say, between a person using Google Glass to take a photo and using a mobile phone to take a photo. But there’s undeniably something visceral and physical in the reaction that certain audiences had to a head-mounted camera, able to surreptitiously record. The science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, in his book Snow Crash, called such wired, always-recording individuals Gargoyles—hardly a warm and inviting description.

The empathy gap doesn’t just apply to Silicon Valley and stereotypical (and untrue) accusations of autism spectrum disorder engineers releasing new technology into the world. It turns out that, rightly or wrongly, this gap is experienced everywhere from the world of travel, where an airline’s customer service can frequently feel indifferent to the needs of those on a long journey; in government, when theoretical legislative policy reaches implementation; and in finance, where the entire world is struggling with income equality.

The situation we find ourselves in is not that the empathy gap is a given and that it must exist. It’s that the existence of a gap is indicative of a choice.

It exists when parties’ interests aren’t identified and are misaligned. It exists when one party doesn’t understand (or willfully ignores) the other’s needs and emotional state.

What’s worse is that it doesn’t look like the empathy gap is narrowing. Like financial inequality, the gap is instead widening: despite more tools and technology that allow us to connect, the businesses, organizations and government bodies that we interact with every day are feeling more and more distant.

This session is the story of how a more connected world made it easier for some organizations to widen the gap of understanding between themselves and their audience, and what other organizations are doing to combat it.

3 Main Takeaways:

1. See the consequences of an empathy gap.
2. Find out how organizations are using our ever more connected world to narrow the empathy gap
3. Learn how you, as an individual, can narrow the empathy gap through design.