Let’s have a little chat about empathy. That fuzzy buzzword that’s been overused in product design world for the better part of… well, forever. We, the self-proclaimed “design thinkers” (a term that now also tastes a little like stale) have wielded it like a magic wand, promising user-centric nirvana with every wireframe and user flow.

But if we’re being brutally honest with ourselves, hasn’t that wand lost a bit of its sparkle? Hasn’t “empathy” in the corporate design world morphed into something… else? Something a lot more predictable, a lot less… well, feeling?

The design rulebook has been written (for now seemingly), Google’s Material Design (name off any and all other design libraries – and the one you are working on now), for all its virtues of consistency and accessibility, has become less of a guideline and more of a North Star, a universally accepted blueprint for how digital products should behave. And in a way, it makes sense. When you’re dealing with millions of users, you can’t exactly unleash a design free-for-all. Confusion breeds drop-off, frustration leads to user complaints, and poor conversion rates. So, we standardize. We create laws of interaction, accessibility guidelines etched in digital stone, expected experiences that, while perhaps limiting creativity, are probably… for the best? Right? We don’t want Grandpa Bill struggling to find the hamburger menu because some hotshot designer decided to get overly fancy with placement.

The result? Design, at the corporate level, feels beige. Sure, some companies splash a bit of brand personality with illustrations, a daring color palette, or the sexiest of all sexy ‘dark mode’. But once you’re in the product, the underlying mechanics, the way you navigate, the way you interact, it all hums along with a familiar, almost robotic predictability. It’s the digital equivalent of knowing exactly where the door handle is on a car (insert funny Tesla joke trying to get out). Efficient? Yes. Soul-stirring? Debatable.

So, what’s the grand next act? Augmented Reality? Virtual Reality? Are we genuinely yearning to strap on headsets and navigate the world through digital lenses? Do we fantasize about HUDs flickering across our vision as we grab our morning coffee? Can we truly envision a future where our keyboards and mice become relics of a bygone era, replaced by… what exactly? Hand gestures in the air? Brain-computer interfaces that will likely come with a hefty privacy agreement we won’t read? This post will probably age about as gracefully as my Puka shell necklace from the 90s, but the question lingers: where in the digital design cosmos do we go next? Are we destined to become fully immersed in some corporate-controlled metaverse, attending digital meetings with our digital avatar team members, typing on digital keyboards in a perpetually simulated office? My brain itches.

But let’s circle back to our dearly departed friend, empathy. Because here’s the kicker: humans are capable of incredible empathy. We rally in the face of tragedy (minus the whole political circus, which often feels like a masterclass in anti-empathy). We show profound compassion, resilience, and a remarkable capacity for connection. My issue isn’t with human empathy; it’s with the commodification of it in the design world – we had a great run, truly.

We sell empathy. We sell design thinking. But what is i? It feels like a checklist of expected interactions, a series of A/B tests optimizing for conversion rates. Are those conversion rates truly a testament to our empathy, or are they simply a measure of how effectively we’ve nudged users down a pre-determined path? Are pay-to-play features layered with empathetic understanding? Is the relentless curated content shoved into our social media feeds – the endless scroll of product ads, health fear-mongering, and strategically placed thirst traps – a genuine expression of caring for our well-being? Influencers, for crying out loud, are literally called influencers. Remember when they were called entertainers? We just skipped straight to the manipulative truth of their existence. Sorry, I’m spiraling into negativity again.

My point is this: empathy (and its sidekick, design thinking) had its moment in the spotlight. We used it – hopefully genuinely, at least in the beginning – to better understand our users, to build more accessible products, to be mindful of cultural nuances and language barriers. But now… what? We’ve built the universal template for digital products. So, what are the legions of designers at these tech behemoths actually doing? Building what? Making what truly groundbreaking decisions? (Don’t even get me started on the impending AI design overlords).

Empathy, my dear, we still love the idea of you. We yearn for your return to where you truly belong: in genuine human-to-human interactions, not just in user journey maps and persona documents.

Empathy, your shift is over – for now. But wait patiently. Perhaps, in the next evolution of how we interact with technology, when we finally break free from the tyranny of the two-dimensional screen, your true, messy, human-to-human form will be needed once more. We look forward to that day.