Summary: What topic draws condemnation and sparks eye-rolls in UX? Empathy. Empathy, the mere mention of it, has created a backlash in the UX community. The problem with the strong reactions is that they are born of misunderstanding and not rooted in science. Understanding how empathy really works can help you navigate this ‘hot’ word among UX colleagues.

Why Empathy Triggers Debate in UX Design

Mention “empathy” in a room full of UX professionals, and you might start a fight. Once a golden word in design thinking, empathy now sparks eye-rolls, hot takes, and backlash.

But step outside the UX bubble — into therapy, education, social work, or disability advocacy — and empathy still matters. A lot. It’s core to care, listening, and making people feel seen.

So why the backlash in UX?

Let’s break it down.

Empathy got misused and abused

From the growing interest in Design Thinking, “empathy” emerged as a requirement. Workshops, case studies, and portfolios leaned hard into “walk in the user’s shoes.” It was earnest at first. But soon, it became lazy shorthand for “I care about users” — without much rigor behind it.

Empathy was used to justify vague decisions:
“I just felt this would be better for the user.”

Designers got tired of unprovable claims dressed up as emotional truth. Critics started to ask: ‘Did you actually walk in your user’s shoes?’ (Do ethnographic or contextual research);  ‘How much did you concoct versus directly experience?’

To be clear: Underlying the misuse and abuse of empathy is a lack of User Research >> Design thinking seemed to imply that workshopping empathy could suffice for spending dozens of hours in the field, ‘living’ alongside users.

It didn’t help that industry leaders sent mixed messages:

👴 Don Norman: (grandfather of Human Centered Design) “I approve of the spirit behind the introduction of empathy into design, but I believe the concept is impossible, and even if possible, wrong. The reason we often talk about empathy in design is that we really need to understand the people that we’re working for. The idea is that, essentially, you’re in a person’s head and understand how they feel and what they think”. (Source: Adobe blog)

👴 Tim Brown: (CEO of IDEO, promoter of Design Thinking) “For me as a designer, empathy is not the end, it’s the means…I don’t want to be designing things just for me. I want to be designing things for people who are different from me. We’ve got a duty to do better.” (Source: Forbes blog)

Note: I believe Don Norman was collaborating with IDEO and the Design Thinking movement during the time he penned those thoughts. Around that time, the UX community started ‘dumping or– dumping on– empathy’.

My take: Tim Brown got it right. However, that message never made it past Design Thinking workshops.

What it’s NOT: Empathy is not a research method

Empathy can open the door — but it’s not enough.

Listening, observing, and reflecting are research methods. Empathy is a mindset, or a vehicle for thinking. Conflating the two weakens both. Some UX leaders pushed back, saying:
“You don’t need empathy — you need evidence.”

The danger is relying too much on intuition. Or assuming we understand users just because we feel their pain. Overconfidence without evidence can lead to misrepresentation, especially across cultures, classes, or abilities.

Worse, empathy in UX often centers the designer’s feelings, not the user’s experience. Think of design critiques where someone says, “I really felt for the user in this flow…” and then shifts focus to their own frustration or interpreting on behalf of users (often absent from the conversation).

What it IS: Empathy is still useful, with limits

Empathy isn’t the enemy. But it’s not a UX superpower either.

Used well, empathy can:

• Help frame better problems to solve (see Problem Framing workshop)

• Make personas more nuanced and relatable

• Reveal emotional pain points that data might miss (engaging Stakeholders)

But it should be paired with methods. With humility. With co-design, testing, feedback loops, and iteration.

And we should stop expecting designers to carry all the emotional labor of understanding everyone, all the time.

Final thought: Rethinking empathy

The empathy backlash isn’t about cruelty or coldness. It’s about understanding the science behind empathy: 1) We’re all wired to potentially experience it in varying depths (see Marco Iacoboni), and 2) Our brain’s ‘default mode’ (network) is constantly thinking of others even when we’re not thinking of anything (see Matthew D Lieberman).

In UX, we need to move from “feel what users feel” to verify with first-hand user research data (contextual or ethnographic interviews) to “understand what users need” to act on it strategically and carefully. And then we need to verify again (user testing).

Keeping users close to your product or service development process is a long-term investment in more strategic empathy. The result is building contextual intelligence in your team.

Empathy still has a place — just not on a pedestal.

Learn more in my upcoming masterclass: Rethinking Empathy: What Works, What Doesn’t in UX