MacroEmpathy Definition As A Branch Of Design

As MacroEconomics is a branch of Economics...(In my opinion, totally fair, since designers foster empathy in their every day professional practice)

Did you know that Macroempathy doesn't exist in the dictionary?. Here is my definition!

Macroempathy: 

(from the Greek prefix makro- meaning "large" and empathy, MacroEmpathy is a branch of Design, fostering empathic performances, behaviors and decision-making  as a whole, rather than individually. This includes national, regional, and global initiatives).

Macroempathy is the global awareness of empathy at the highest levels of leadership and commitment, that leads to
a truly empathic and human-centered world.
World's empathy as a whole.  
Macroempathy is the next worldwide challenge to foster human understanding, wellness and justice.


See Macroeconomics

My conclusion: We need to elevate EMPATHY to the highest levels of global commitment and awareness: MACROEMPATHY. 

My thoughts about MacroEmpathy as a Design Thinker:


DT-in-action: Building Empathy
How Designers Foster Empathy
Thinking about Empathy
Design Thinking Attitude
Definition of Design Thinking

--We can do much better--

VIDEO: "Future by Design" explores Jacque Fresco’s world of the future.

Does Macroeconomy need Macroempathy and viceversa?

Delivering Unsolicited Meaning: First They Ignore You...And Then You Win

First they ignore you...by Mahatma Gandhi

What does usually happen when a design thinker delivers unsolicited meaning to an audience that is not prepared to understand nor listen to anything out of their system of knowledge?

First they ignore you, 

You'd probably find silence when sharing new ways of thinking about a situation and giving existing things new meaning.

Let's face it: Most of the innovations happen because mad designers and innovators are so stubborn! 

As a Design Thinking practitioner, I believe it's necessary to master a kind of passionate excitement about the "finding" of the idea or meaning, and the "fighting" for make it happen. It's a kind of "design thinking CORE" that, together with some others, make you say with security: 

“This is going to work”.This is the way to go. I know it.

Designers don't take a NO for an answer: It might seems at first they do, but it's just another designer's trick. It's a step back to reconsider a new strategy to try again, and again to make an idea HAPPEN. 

...Then they laugh at you, 

Too many professional still don´t know how to adapt to an ever-evolving business environment.

I understand that challenging the COMMON conceptual structure used in constructing theories is hard for both parts:

• As the "challenger", you better be ready to a "your analysis has no rigor", and a few pity faces feeling sorry for you.
• As the "challenged", please consider that rationality is necessary when analyzing any situation, but it's a part of the process of understanding, especially when trying to innovate and find meaning in a fuzzy problem.

This is why Design Thinkers are undergirded with hard-core analytical and a broader data gathering, that includes observation and sense making of society in general, people, technology, emotions and developing of insights. 

  

Most senior managers and CEOs would trust in strategic concepts and logical deductions based on their "logical data gathering": They use tools such as benchmarking, analytical data, etc., to arrive to solid conclusions. Executives construct theories using their rationality and their conceptual structure and culture. They come to conclusions that make a lot of sense for them because the sense they find is soooo similar of what they found last year, and the year before... only reinforces current knowledge and produces small improvements to the status quo. 

...Then they fight you, 

A Design Thinking approach challenges the 100% rational methods...and that is... scary?
For some analytical thinking professionals I guess it is. But it won't go away: It's a fact that there are experts (innovator, design thinkers, scientists) who are able to identify industry trends and important big ideas way ahead of the rest of the professionals and, even more important, designers know how to network with other "interpreters" – customers, suppliers, intermediaries, designers, artists - who understand and shape the markets they work in.

A new approach means redesign the business as they know it. I guess that is scary too.

...Then you win. 

The “This is going to work” is a fact...two years later, the average time leaders need to understand unsolicited meaning delivered by one of those mad designers two years before...the problem is that, sometimes, it's too late.

And just for the record: 

1. Labelling people doesn't work anymore
2. Better listen the “This is never going to work” 
3. Some leaders just never get it....
4. Any business can commit to successful design thinking

My inspirations to write this post:

Changing the Rules of Competition by  Radically Innovating What Things Mean, by Roberto Vergant
The Generation M Manifesto by Umair Haque
THE END OF BLAH BLAH BLAH – END THOSE USELESS MEETINGS FULL OF TALK By Alexander Osterwalder

Be irrationally optimistic Jeff Haden
A new era of meaning By Tim Leberecht 

Design Thinking starts at the top 

BY JOHN MIZIOLEK

Design Thinking: Transforming Reality

los SAN. 44.00 ADC. Hallazgos de bastones de madera, punzones de hueso y ornamentos corporales. 

/ F. D'ERRICO / L. BACKWELL. El País

Human progress and Designers: Pioneers of Design Thinking.

One of the great paradoxes of paleontology is called the Great Leap, or sudden appearance in Europe around 40,000 years ago, advanced instruments typical of modern human creativity.

Design Thinking or "the process of a practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result" (Simon, 1969), is not a new resource as stated in various forums in Spain: It is a procedure that has existed since Humanity became a Global Community because some of its members-designers decided not to settled for what nature had given them and dared to "reform" and therefore, change the status quo, therefore, transform reality. How could I tear the skin of an animal .. .? How can I reach the fruit of the tree ...?

It all starts with a question: Why not ...?, What if I ...? How could we ...? what would happen if I...?

The artifacts belong to the San culture, one group of African Bushmen who, by all evidence, invented the modern culture of hunter-gatherers who quickly spread throughout the world.

Nothing has changed to these days (pattern nº1) : Designs that involve a real improvement in the lives of people spread at lightning speed and have the power to alter the known reality: Is the collective consciousness of survival that we all share that matches what is needed in each historical period? Why innovations don't usually match Leaders' mindset? (Pattern nº2).

In all human groups there is always someone who believes that reality can be improved, and a majority that prefer leaving everything just the way it is: and this is invariably a conflict situation (pattern nº3) which leads to these Designers to insist and insist on their idea or dream of improvement in many cases in a quite heroic way. It takes courage (pattern 4) to follow a inner impulse (instinct?) driven to change what is known and it takes courage too to accept these innovations because most of us are concerned about any kind of change: How am I going to react?, Where does it leads?, Will I have to change too? Staying just as we are gives us a false security based on the believe that the future is going to be just as the known past ...and that's not going to happen: Future cannot be decided, the future happens: Won't it be better create it, design it? At least we have to try.

There is always someone inventing new and better ways to get things done: Is it only the passion, an inner certainty impossible to avoid, is the urge to share the finding with the rest of the world?. The impetus of changing reality by inventing new ways of understanding has been punished throughout history as we all know: "How can you be so arrogant to think you can do something to change reality? How dare you question what most assume and approve? Do you think you are better than us?" (Pattern nº5). It's complicated to explain what leads some members of a community to strive, and why they insist on their idea or dream of improvement... Is there perhaps a mandatory interior map?. Albert Einstein said he desired simply to "experience the universe as a single significant whole." Nothing more, nothing less: see the big picture and reconcile the personal with the universal. This drive to fit all the nuances of life in a big puzzle is a hallmark of creativity.


Are empaths designers? Absolutely. One certainty is that any of us is that  unique nor special: we all are persons that need other persons. The designer needs to develop a sense of global community and also needs to develop an insight.


We are all creative, but there are people who see the world as an opportunity to continue creating and designing. It is a devotion. Creating is a goal in itself. If you also have a specific purpose, creativity and their own process, Design Thinking, becomes the more accurate tool for any challenge. 


There is always someone who identifies opportunities of improvement in reality that not everybody can see...and asks questions, What if ...? and challenge themselves, and set personal goals and commit to what they have planned. Is an inner impulse. And them again, the designer will have to insist and insist and fight against skepticism and overcome the impediments of their surroundings, their time, even their own family ...

My opinion? Possibly there is an internal search of the beauty of the result, meaning that the result is the fruit of the personal growth of all written so far and the tangible "proof"  that the "big picture" designed in a designer's imagination has been captured and implemented in reality, coupled with the certainty of having improved the community they belong.
The other vital impulse I will add is also entirely personal: the fight against oneself that involves overcoming patterns nº 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 90 ... and keep on believing in yourself, despite all of them: this is the most exciting personal achievement that one can obtain.


Surely there is someone around you trying to improve what he/she sees and what he/she lives. Listen. Chances are that it will benefit you in the future.

Design Thinking: transformar la realidad

los SAN. 44.00 ADC. Hallazgos de bastones de madera, punzones de hueso y ornamentos corporales. 
/ F. D'ERRICO / L. BACKWELL. El País

El progreso de la humanidad y los diseñadores.

Una de las grandes paradojas de la paleontología es el llamado Gran Salto, o aparición repentina en Europa, hace unos 40.000 años, de los instrumentos avanzados propios de la creatividad humana moderna. 

El Design Thinking o el proceso de solucionar de forma práctica y creativa los problemas o cuestiones que busca mejorar el resultado/futuro" (Simon, 1969), no es un recurso nuevo como se dice en diferentes foros: es un procedimiento que existe desde que la humanidad se convirtió en comunidad gracias a que algunos de sus miembros -diseñadores- decidieron no conformarse con lo que la naturaleza les ofrecía y se atrevieron a "intervenirla" y por consiguiente, cambiarla. ¿Cómo podría rasgar la piel de un animal...? ¿Cómo puedo alcanzar la fruta del árbol...?  

Todo empieza por una pregunta: ¿Por qué no...?, ¿Y si hiciera...? ¿cómo podríamos hacer que...?, ¿qué pasaría si...?

Los artefactos pertenecen a la cultura San, uno de los grupos de bosquimanos que, según todas las evidencias, inventaron la moderna cultura de los cazadores-recolectores que enseguida se propagó por el mundo.

Es un (patrón 1) que no ha cambiado hasta nuestros días: los diseños que implican una mejora real en la vida de las personas se propagan a la velocidad del rayo y cambian la realidad CONOCIDA: ¿será la conciencia colectiva de supervivencia que todos compartimos la que detecta lo que se necesita en cada momento histórico? ¿Será por esta razón por la que los cambios habitualmente son asumidos antes por la comunidad que por los propios líderes? (patrón 2).

En todos los grupos humanos siempre hay alguien que no se conforma con lo establecido frente a una mayoría que no admite cambios. Y esta situación supone invariablemente un conflicto (patrón 3) qué lleva a estos Rediseñadores de la realidad a empeñarse e insistir en su idea o su sueño de mejora en muchos casos de forma heróica. Hay que tener valor (patrón 4) para seguir el impulso personal de cambiar lo conocido y también hay que tener valor para acepta esa alteración de lo conocido, porque a la mayoría de nosotros nos inquieta el cambio, sea de la índole que sea: ¿cómo reaccionaremos, a dónde nos lleva, tendré que cambiar yo? Nos da seguridad imaginarnos un futuro como el presente y el pasado que hemos vivido, pero eso es una falsa quimera: el futuro no se decide, el futuro ocurre: ¿no será mejor crearlo, diseñarlo? Al menos hay que intentarlo. 

Siempre hay alguien que intenta mejorar lo que ve y lo que vive: ¿será solo la pasión, la certeza interna imposible de eludir, será el impulso de compartir?. El impulso de algunos de no conformarse con la realidad, ha sido castigado a lo largo de la historia como todos sabemos: ¿es que no tienes suficiente con lo que "te damos"? ¿cómo puedes ser tan prepotente que piensas que tu puedes hacer algo para cambiar la realidad? ¿cómo te atreves a cuestionar lo que la mayoría asume y con lo que se conforma? (patrón 5). Es difícil de explicar qué lleva a algunos miembros de la humanidad a empeñarse, insistir en su idea o su sueño de mejora: ¿existe quizás un mapa interior de obligado cumplimiento?. Ya dijo Albert Einstein que deseaba conseguir simplemente  "experimentar el universo como un todo". Nada más y nada menos: alcanzar la totalidad, un intento de ver el panorama general y conciliar lo personal con lo universal. Este impulso para adaptarse a todos los matices de la vida en un gran rompecabezas es un sello distintivo de la creatividad.


¿Es el diseñador empático? Sin duda. Una de las certezas del diseñador es que las necesidades propias, cuando son honestas, siempre son compartidas por nuestros pares: no estamos solos ni somos únicos ni especiales. EL diseñador es muy consciente de la comunidad de la que forma parte: es lo que estudia y observa para seguir creando.


Todos somos creativos, pero hay personas que ven el mundo como una oportunidad para seguir creando y diseñando. Es una devoción. Crear es una meta en si misma. Si además tiene un objetivo concreto, la creatividad y su propio proceso -Design Thinking- se convierte en la herramienta más certera para afrontar cualquier reto. Cuando un diseñador/creador no tiene un proyecto concreto, "afila" su herramienta de conocimiento, perfeccionan sus capacidades a la espera del siguiente reto. 

Siempre hay alguien que detecta oportunidades de mejora en la realidad y se hace preguntas, ¿Qué pasaría sí...? y se retan a ellos mismos, y se ponen metas y comprometen con lo que han proyectado. Y en muchos y conocidos casos, se tienen que empeñan e insistir y luchar contra el escepticismo y los impedimentos de su entorno, de su época...

¿Cuál es mi opinión? Posiblemente hay una búsqueda interna de la belleza en el resultado, entendiendo que el resultado es el fruto de la superación personal de todo lo hablado hasta ahora y la "prueba" tangible de que lo que uno ideó, diseñó en su imaginación, ha sido plasmado e incluso mejorado en la realidad, unido a la certeza de haber mejorado la comunidad a la que perteneces.
El otro impulso vital que añadiría es también enteramente personal: la lucha contra uno mismo que implica superan los los patrones 1,2, 3, 4, 5...90... y confiar en ti mismo, a pesar de todos ellos: este es el logro personal más emocionante que uno puede alcanzar.

Seguro que hay alguien cerca de ti que intenta mejorar lo que ve y lo que vive. Escúchale. Hay muchas posibilidades de que los cambios que consiga hacer te beneficien a ti en el futuro.