Designing for Empathy

In this live full-day, in-person workshop, you'll learn how to deeply understand your users and translate that understanding into meaningful design decisions. We'll explore methods for cultivating genuine empathy, moving beyond surface-level personas to truly grasp the emotions, motivations, and challenges that shape user experiences. You'll leave with practical techniques for conducting empathic research, creating actionable empathy maps, and embedding a culture of user-centricity into your team's design process. Whether you're improving an existing product or starting fresh, this workshop will transform how you connect with the people you design for.

What changes after this workshop

• Your team stops designing based on assumptions and starts designing based on real user insight.
• Research synthesis becomes more actionable. You know what to do with the insights you gather.
• Tradeoff decisions become easier. You have a clearer picture of what matters to your users.
• Your products feel more personal and intuitive. Users notice the difference.
• Cross-functional teams align around user needs, not internal preferences.

What you leave with

• An empathy map template customized to your team's product and context
• An interview guide for conducting empathic user research
• A synthesis framework for turning raw research into design direction
• An insight-to-action checklist for translating findings into features
• A set of empathy prompts to use in design critiques and reviews
• A certificate of completion for each participant

Choose this workshop if

• Your designs are functional but feel distant or generic to users
• You have user research but struggle to turn it into actionable design decisions
• Your team relies too heavily on assumptions or outdated personas
• You want to build a culture where user understanding drives every decision

It’s not a fit if

• You're looking for quantitative research methods. This workshop is about qualitative depth.
• You need help defining design principles. Check out our Design Principles workshop instead.
• Your team has no access to users. You'll need at least some user contact to apply the methods.

Agenda

Facilitator

With well over a decade of experience, Paul has been a steadfast advocate for design that genuinely cares about the human experience — collaborating with the likes of Unity, GetYourGuide, Shopify, and Coinbase, and helping designers of all levels create work that resonates.

What people say

“We had years of user interviews sitting in docs no one read. After this workshop, we finally knew what to do with them. Our next feature shipped with half the iteration cycles.”

Maya Chen, VP of Product Design, Consumer Fintech

Pricing

Before you pay a dime, we schedule a 30-minute intro call to understand your team and tailor the day — so the price below is a starting point, not a surprise.

Questions