Extreme Empathy and a Character Description of a Workmate - Essay Example

Extreme empathyEmpathy research simulates a scenario and therefore improves understanding towards effective measures. Simulating service delivery scenario and in which a service provider assumes a customer’s position, for example, facilitates greater understanding of customers’ experiences and informs practices for customers’ optimal utility. This discussion, based on an extreme empathy research, describes a character and lessons learnt from the character, and conclude that empathy research can strengthen prevention programs by exposing policy makers to factors to infections, experience with the infection, and need to prevent the infections.

My study created a character description of a workmate with whom I have not related closely. I interviewed the person and learnt he wakes up at 4 am each day, freshens up, and studies for an academic program. Preparations for work follows this and he often miss breakfast because of tight schedule. He takes lunch at a specific restaurant where he also meets friends and attends academic classes in the evenings. The character also reported taste for designer clothes and shoes, but he never minds the retailer from whom he purchases the commodities.

His rewarding parts of the week are moments with best friends and successful academic classes. I then emulated the workmate’s schedules and behavior in the following week and the experience enlightened me on factors around the friend’s activities. I discovered some delicious foods and those in which I could not delight. Understanding the person’s friends also informed me of the role of peer influence in a person’s choice for personal utilities such as wears and types of food that a person consumes.

Based on the experience, I learnt that empathy research develops in-depth information about a person or an activity and leads to more informed decisions than reliance on objective studies. This is because attitude towards the person changed after I emulated his lifestyle, as I learnt that I could similarly assume his behavior if I lived in the same social environment as he did. I learnt, from the study and the perspective by Battarbee, Suri, and Howard (8), that empathy research can strengthen prevention programs just as it helps to solve problems in the corporate sector and to understand a person based on empathy.

The research approach can strengthen the programs by ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the need to develop such programs and possible interaction between the programs and the people that should benefit from the programs. This leads to development of effective and acceptable prevention programs. With an understanding of social and behavioral factors in a target population, challenge of resistance to developed programs can be eliminated and this would mean higher prevention rates. Understanding people’s behavior and factors to the behavior also informs strategy selection towards efficiency of developed prevention programs.

The activity improved my knowledge on empathy research and significance of the research approach in developing and strengthening policy programs. I identified a workmate with whom I have not been close to understand his lifestyle. I then developed a character description for the person and emulated his lifestyle. This enlightened me on factors to the person’s life and I learnt that empathy research could similarly inform policy makers on factors around health issues for better preventive strategies.

Works citedBattarbee, Katja, Suri, Jane, and Howard, Suzanne. “Empathy on the edge: Scaling and sustaining a human centered approach in the evolving practice of design.” IDEO. N.d. Web. January 27, 2015. < http://www.ideo.com/images/uploads/news/pdfs/Empathy_on_the_Edge.pdf>.