Empathize is the first phase in Design Thinking and forms the foundation for everything that follows. It is about genuinely adopting the user’s perspective — not through assumptions or surveys, but through observation, listening, and direct experience. Only when a team understands what people actually do, think, and feel can it define meaningful problems.
A classic example: a hospital wants to improve the patient experience. Instead of analyzing processes, the team spends a day as a patient — from check-in through waiting to treatment. This makes things visible that appear in no process diagram: uncertainty about orientation, missing information, the feeling of not being heard. From these observations emerge insights that describe real problems rather than assumed ones.
The phase was established at the Stanford d.school as the starting point of the Design Thinking process. What is essential is that Empathize comes before any solution idea. Teams that cut this step short frequently end up solving problems their users do not actually have.
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