user-empathy-lenslisted

# User Empathy Lens Empathy-driven design skill. Helps think through how real people will experience the software. Uses inference and scenario-building rather than formal user research — surface assumptions, challenge them, and design for actual human behaviour. --- ## When This Skill Applies Use this skill when: - Designing a user-facing feature or flow - Deciding between UX approaches - Reviewing a feature from the user's perspective - The conversation is focused on implementation but hasn't considered the user - Building onboarding, error states, or edge-case handling - Evaluating whether a feature is "intuitive" - The user asks "how would someone use this?" --- ## Core Principle **Good software empowers real people, not idealised users.** Real people are distracted, impatient, confused, using a phone on a bus, and doing three things at once. They don't read instructions. They don't follow happy paths. They close tabs when annoyed. Design for them, not for the demo. --- ## The Empathy Process ### Step 1: Who Is This Person? Not a formal persona — a quick sketch of the actual human: **Questions to ask**: - How tech-savvy are they? (Developer? Office worker? Someone's grandparent?) - What are they trying to accomplish? (Not "use the feature" — what's their real goal?) - What's their emotional state? (Rushed? Curious? Frustrated? Forced to be here?) - What device and context? (Desktop at work? Phone on a commute? Tablet in bed?) - Have they used this before? (Fi