There are lots of folks out there talking about Empathy and Content Strategy but the thought I keep coming back to is, “is empathy enough”? Do we also need to consider Compassion when creating a Content Strategy, and if yes, how do we go beyond Empathy, “I know you,” “I feel with you,” to Compassion, “I care about you,” “I am here to help?”
This idea first came to my attention because I had been listening to the Content Strategy Podcast (sense a theme here with my last blog?) and someone mentioned a tweet they read where the author talked about not just having empathy for our users but how do we create empathy between users. This idea just fascinated me so I started googling to see if I could find the original tweet and more people talking about this idea.
While I could not find this exact tweet, I came across Erika Hall’s tweet from 2018 remarking, “I'd love to hear product people and designers talk about compassion more than empathy. Right now technology products and services skew too much "empathy + cynicism".” This generated a comment asking for an example, and she responded, “The design of a casino shows empathy (you know how people work) without compassion (you use that knowledge to make maximum profit off of them w/ disregard for their wellbeing).” An easy online comparison can be drawn to online casinos, but this resonated with me personally in how my daughter playing Roblox has started emptying my pockets for Robux. Roblox designs their app with empathy, they know my 11-year-old and they know she will ask me for Robux so she can purchase items to get more out of the experience, so I am not sensing much compassion in their design.
Then, not too long after, the graphic below came across my LinkedIn feed.
It got me thinking, how can we go beyond empathy in our content strategy, where we are focusing not only on knowing who our consumers are and what they need, to a compassionate content strategy? How can we, through the content we produce, show them that we are here to help?
In designing a content strategy for online learning and development courses, it is important to keep the learner at the center of the content design, because even though the product is a piece of content, the goal is to develop a person. The goal is to have a flexible process that helps us put learners’ needs at the forefront while solving content challenges.
- We need to ensure that through every content action they feel welcomed and acknowledged. This can be achieved through welcome messaging upon enrollment and clear instructions for how to achieve success, along with follow-up messaging acknowledging their efforts and providing clear next steps for continued success.
- Another opportunity is to ensure that your Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Experience Platform (LXP) has clear instructions, not all students will know how to navigate their way through the site, and there is nothing more frustrating to people than wasting time.
- Finally, look for opportunities to promote meaningful discussions between learners by connecting them to community sites to continue learning beyond what is offered in online instruction.
I think in a world where people are burnt out and companies are competing for talent, organizations have a huge opportunity to provide meaningful content experiences that show not just empathy but compassion to their learners. Can you think of any other ways we can achieve this? I would love to continue the conversation!
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