empathy building

How are you hacking the diversity & inclusion gap?

defending diversity, heatherlee nguyen

Our differences create opportunities.
Opportunities for a more equitable world.

How are you empowering those people who look and who talk and who live & love differently than you? How can you do better? We all need to confront our biases and check our privilege at the door. I see promise in our future products in services. I believe we can build a more equitable world!

Don’t you?


Peace & love are universal concepts.
Now, more than ever is the time to defend diversity.
We all belong.


Tα•ΌE Iα‘Žα—ͺIE α‘•Oα‘Žα”•α‘Œα’ͺTα—©α‘ŽT
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I’m Heatherlee. An independent research and design consultant with a background in UX, a passion for service design, an interest in biomimicry and a stake in your strategy. I’m passionate about helping you bridge the gap between your product teams and the people you design for.

Contact info & more about me here.

Quotes from clients, reframing with empathy

defending diversity, Embracing Change, product research, user research

“They’re not using it the way it’s designed to work.”
“This is a training issue.”
“We just have to train the users to do it that way, not this way.”
“We don’t want to design things that enforce behaviors we don’t like.”

– clients’ response to your UX design concepts..

I have heard these comments many times in the enterprise UX world. Sometimes we have this idea of how things should work in our head. We have ways in which we wish users would do things. Or we’re attached to the way we designed a system to work. And even when we find out users aren’t using it how we’d expect, how we might prefer, we turn it into a training issue rather than a design exercise. 

Sometimes, β€œthe customer is always right.” Design should be in service of a users’ process, not a deterrent. Products should be designed to be intuitive, not require weeks of training. Instead of the above mindsets, I encourage team members to reframe the problem and riff on some β€œhow might we’s..

How might we design it to work the way people want to use it?
How might we learn why people are not using it as trained?
How might we let users’ natural behaviors guide our design decisions?
How might we respond to users’ workarounds?

– reframing the “training issue..”

Elon Musk says, β€œAny product that needs a manual to work is broken.” 
β€” For the most part, I kinda agree! How about you?


Tα•ΌE Iα‘Žα—ͺIE α‘•Oα‘Žα”•α‘Œα’ͺTα—©α‘ŽT
π—£π—Ώπ—Όπ—±π˜‚π—°π˜ »𝗖𝗫« π—¦π—²π—Ώπ˜ƒπ—Άπ—°π—² π——π—²π˜€π—Άπ—΄π—»

I’m Heatherlee. An independent research and design consultant with a background in UX, a passion for service design, an interest in biomimicry and a stake in your strategy. I’m passionate about helping you bridge the gap between your product teams and the people you design for.

Contact info & more about me here.