Going beyond empathy in designing solutions?

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Thanks to design thinking, the word 'empathy' is 'mainstreamed' now and doesn't sound cliched anymore. But empathy is more about 𝐦𝐲 understanding of the 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. Is it possible to fully understand another person's reality? In disability awareness and sensitisation workshops, we try out simulation activities for different kinds of disabilities. Blindfolding to understand visual impairment, ear plugs to understand hearing impairment, using wheelchair to understand accessibility barriers in the environment and so on. We barely scratch the surface of understanding the lived experience of a person with disability. Still, we plough ahead and design a solution, based on our understanding. It's bound to fail, obviously. What next?

ITERATE! 

It requires some active mindset to accept failure and even more energy to examine the reasons for the failure and repeat the cycle. Working in the field of disabilities and assistive technology, we come across a lot of bad prototypes and so many incomplete projects. Barely few iterate. May be it's time to modify the design thinking terminologies and humanize the steps after 'empathize' as well. It really requires an act of compassion to go beyond and stick to the cycle. 

Now, don't roll your eyes at 'compassion'. It's only a matter of a few research papers in product designing and some workshops by industry experts. Academia will follow soon and 'compassion' will become part of the 'mainstream', scientific/engineering lingo too, just like 'empathy'.