Everything is Alive is delightfully empathetic

I love this podcast so much! Particularly the latest episode where Ian Chillag interviews Emmy (played by Emmy Blotnick), who is a pregnancy test and who is also delightful, upbeat, and is excited (and maybe a little apprehensive) to get peed on.

Part of why I love Everything is Alive so much is the way it radically shifts my perception/perspective and how it creates a sense of empathy for things we don’t usually have empathy for. It uses anthropomorphism to give inanimate objects voices and allows me to connect with them. This shifts my whole perspective on the world and the people and objects in it. This shift opens up a creative space in me where exciting new ideas are born.

Empathy is the starting point of good design. It’s at the focus of Design Thinking, which is the last buzzword we designers are using to talk about our people-centered approach to our jobs.

Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we designers seek to gain empathy for the people we’re designing for, challenge our own assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative approaches and solutions that might not be instantly apparent.

Design Thinking is useful because it helps us re-frame our approach by putting human beings and their wants and needs at the center of the process. It helps us come up with new ideas when we brainstorm and allows us to adopt a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.

I like Everything is Alive because it’s funny, informative, and entertaining. I love it because it helps me think differently and because of the odd, radical empathy it inspires. Yay! Empathy!