Facebook Has Empathy Team to Remind Staff That Users Are People

Users. The internet, specifically social media, lives on users. The internet is users. Check Twitter, scroll down to the comments section, read any ‘flame war’: it’s easy to forget that those users are people; humans with thoughts, feelings, wants and needs. But Facebook is making efforts to see its users as people.

Martha Gould Stewart, Facebook’s Director of Product Design, has revealed that the company has formed its own ‘empathy team’ to remind its staff that everyone who uses the social media site is a human being.

Speaking at The Atlantic’s Navigate technology conference on Wednesday, Stewart explained, “As somebody once said: It’s kind of arrogant to think the only reason people exist is to use what you built. They actually have lives, like, outside the experience they have using your product, and so the first step of designing in a human-centered way is to recognize that they’re humans.” Facebook has stopped referring to “daily average users,” instead calling those with a Facebook profile “daily average people.”

“If you succeed or fail at a particular goal, you may not feel the pain or success that a real person using that product to run their business will feel. So we find when we pair individuals and build a relationship with a small business and the campaign they made fails, [Facebook staff] feel that,” Stewart added. “They want to help that person succeed, which is very different from doing it in the abstract.”

Facebook currently has 1.35 billion monthly active users, that’s a lot of people.

Source: The Verge