Designing from the Heart: A Chat with Mr Sunesis

In July, Aluko Brown, a Senior Designer on the team, wrote on the role of empathy in the design process. The article expressed our focus as a team on creating visual communication and branding results that help you stand out in an increasingly individual and personalized world with various alternative experiences — we design from the heart with the end users in mind.

We believe that empathy precedes ideation, prototyping and even design execution as it involves thinking up solutions for our clients with an understanding of people that the brand would be relating with. It helps us to create solutions that meet the parameters of a successful product or service: Functionality, appeal and feasibility. You can check out the article on our Medium.

And in order to further explore the concept of empathy, we engaged Chuks Ogene, popularly known as @MrSunesis (The Creative Director of The Design Project) on a twitter conversation to discuss the Role of Empathy in the Creative Design Process.

Chuks started with giving a definition of design to mean thoughts and processes that make an idea happen (if something is working, design is working, if it is failing, design is failing).

On which comes first between people or design in the creative process, he explained that people give meaning to everything. “If your design has no people connection or relevance, then it has no benefit or value”, Chuks added. To put this in perspective, @MrSunesis defined empathy in the context of design to mean putting yourself (the designer/problem solver) in the shoes of the people experiencing the problem(s); so you have a firsthand experience of the problem you think you want to solve, even before you start designing a solution.

FourthCanvas: What is the connection between proper research and empathy in the design process?

@mrsunesis: “I strongly believe they go together. Empathy motivates you to genuinely research the problem you are trying to solve. In turn, the discoveries you make from research can further can you understanding which drives empathy…and vice versa.”

FourthCanvas: Where would you advise designers to place solving problems in comparison to other purposes of design?

@mrsunesis: “If designers have a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, problem-solving is the first level…it is the foundation. Everything else rises and falls on how well we as designers are able to solve problems. Unfortunately, I see most designers are more interested in what design “looks like” at the expense of the problem it solves first.”

FourthCanvas: Wow! So what are some of the questions that you believe designers should get clients to answer to help in creating designs that put people first?

@mrsunesis:

“I love this question. It is in four parts…

1. What problem are you trying to solve? This is where you define your idea or task so you understand well…accurate definition means you understand the problem.

2. Why does the problem exist? Or why are you trying to make this idea happen? As designers, this is the motivation behind your work. Sometimes, it may be that you want to be known or you want to make money or help your client achieve their aim etc. Find your motive.

3. How will you make the idea happen? Investigate the client’s methods of solving present problems. One can create newer ways to solve the problem here. But that is if you and the client understand Q1 and Q2, innovation is birthed here.

4. Where is the Impact of the design felt? This can be on ROI, or society, etc. for the client. Observing where the impact is felt is feedback. Every designer needs feedback. Where in the society does the client’s idea affect?

At #TheDesignProject, we try to make clients or ourselves answer Q1 and Q2 with just one sentence ONLY…such that a 5-year-old can understand what you are saying. This way, designer and clients have a better understanding of the idea.”

FourthCanvas: Sometimes, designers are ready to rush to satisfy clients who simply want results ASAP. In situations like this, empathy sounds luxurious as a concept, what do you advice on this?

@mrsunesis: “Understanding empathy makes it easier to tackle the problem designers want to solve. Designers ought to educate clients on the benefits of a good and well-done job. Most designers, in a bid to survive, cut corners of accurately educating clients about the benefits of doing a good work.”

In sharing concluding thoughts, @mrsunesis emphasized the need to have designs that exude people-connection and the understanding of the value of empathy — the genuine desire to actually meet needs and solve problems. He made a case for putting the interest of end users at heart before the desire for profit so that they can really find the design solution useful. This is because, the more useful your design is, the more valuable it becomes, which attracts more profit for the bottom line.

You can check out the conversation on our twitter handle and even share your thoughts on the thread. However, we believe overwhelmingly that design in various aspects can help to change the world, for us at FourthCanvas, we have chosen the niche to build African businesses.