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Empathy Team Google Trip
Edwin and Alex were invited to speak at this google executive training event on our work on empathy building.The entire team got involved and we all gave sort talks.
The empathy team was invited to present our work to 150 Google leaders from around the world for a leadership training at their offices in Silicon Valley at the GooglePlex. The person putting on the conference saw a Google Hangout that Jane and I did with Acumen and IDEO.
She saw we were working on designing for empathy and that interested her so she invited us to take part.
It was a multi-day training put on by Duke University, where they used human-centered design to address the Bay Area housing and transportation issues. The Googlers formed teams of 50 to work on the challenge.
Day 1 - Edwin and Alex gave presentations on our Empathy work
Day 2 - we divided into 3 groups and the Google teams presented their findings to us for an hour. We gave feedback and then at the end we held a panel discussion where we all gave our feedback on what we had heard. I was a bit disappointed with my feedback since I feel I was too prescriptive and not empathically reflective enough about what I heard the groups feelings and needs were.
In my first presentation I mentioned that I feel empathic listening is a major core part of building empathy. I shared and asked the audience to reflect back what they were hearing me say. I shared some personal family experiences and ended up in tears. One person came up afterwards and said it was good to see real emotions in a presentation.
It was certainly an interesting experience. I came to see that Google is using human-centered design as part of their corporate culture.
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