Looking for UX professionals with empathy? Hire actors.

I wrote this last spring after I had lunch with Indi Young at Convey UX in Seattle. She was about to give a couple presentations on empathy and research, and asked if I felt actors did indeed have higher levels of empathy. Yes! Yes, I do.

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Empathy. It’s a word I hear thrown around a lot when people talk about User Experience. I read about it throughout my CareerFoundry class exercises, various articles, blogs, and books as one of the most important qualities to possess in designing user experiences. Brené Brown has been bringing that conversation into popular culture in the last few years, but I still feel that many of us are missing the mark.

Most postings I’m seeing as I begin the job search journey, desire backgrounds and degrees in Human Factors, Psychology, Anthropology, or “some related field.” Which all sound really interesting, and are without a doubt solid choices for UX. But I think there are other “related fields” that no one’s thinking about, because while in time anyone can learn how to make a great persona or wireframe, it’s a lot more challenging to learn and develop real empathy. Especially in a classroom.

And yet it’s the very thing that serious actors cultivate and develop on a daily basis.

I’ll admit, my career change from actor to UX Designer doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense at first. I’ve little experience working with most of these tools, and the learning curve has been steep with some of the more complex applications (I’m looking at you, Sketch). However with a clear plan laid out through CareerFoundry’s UX Career Change program, and a great mentor and tutor, it’s completely doable and actually a lot of fun. I’m using areas of my brain I thought had long since withered, and finding the work to be incredibly creative and intuitive.

Which brings me back to empathy. Several months ago I participated in a user research study with a very well respected, established design firm leading the interviews. It would be an understatement to say I was thrilled to be able to watch top-notch professionals conduct the kind of research I hoped to lead someday.

Unfortunately, I felt that I learned more what not to do. I felt rushed. Now, I understand that time’s probably always an issue in user research — never enough of it, and so much insight to glean. But I kept getting the sense from the man leading the session that I needed to be more succinct. Towards the last hour he even started asking leading questions, and finishing our sentences to move things along. As we were wrapping up, he circled some objects for me on an exercise I was intended to fill out, handed us each an envelope with cash in it, and sent us on our way. I guess when you’re getting a little stipend for your time, it makes it less frustrating to feel disregarded, but no one can convince me that this in-demand user research professional was well stocked up on empathy.

Maybe he’d had a bad day. Maybe he found our feedback unhelpful. Maybe they were over budget and he wasn’t getting paid for this session or he had to run to the loo. Whatever the case, it was not by any stretch an atmosphere infused with the one quality that UX professionals are meant to have. And if your participants aren’t comfortable, there’s no way you’re getting the best data.

I understand why Anthropology or Human Computer Interaction might make me a more attractive or competitive candidate for a job in UX. Those people have spent years studying and developing relatable skills and knowledge in very specific ways for this people-centered field.

But have they been trained in the required soft skills?

As an actor, we start off any new project researching a role. Who is this person you’re going to inhabit? Where are they from? What is it like there, how do they make money, what do they eat, what to they wear, their socioeconomic class, education? I could go on and on but you get the point. In rehearsals, you make choices about the character based on your research, you try things, you get feedback from your director and other actors, iterate, and try again. We might repeat this a dozen times each rehearsal on one scene. One must be flexible, adaptable, open, and creative. Acting is listening. And I argue, acting is empathy. It’s impossible to convincingly play a character that you don’t understand or find some way to relate to and, ideally, fall in love with. It’s an actor’s job to figure out how to get inside the person they’ll portray and stand in their shoes. To connect with that part of ourselves that understands a person’s motivations, needs, goals, and frustrations. Because we don’t watch shows about perfect lives where nothing happens, often these characters are incredibly complex and flawed. Actors have to go to some pretty deep and sometimes dark emotional places. It’s a crash course in empathy. Every. Single. Day.

I hope that more companies hiring open up to the idea that actors have the soft skills desperately needed for this profession. I hope that a degree in acting is someday added to that list of desired backgrounds. Most of all, I hope that more actors see UX as a natural progression of the skills they’ve already been developing for years, which also provides career stability and a living wage. Far too many of us hard-working, adaptable, and empathetic artists are underearning and doing jobs we hate to get by. As for the other technical skills, those we can develop through bootcamps and career courses like the one I chose.

I feel incredibly lucky to have found UX. It’s creative, collaborative, and always changing — much like working in the theatre. I’m excited to see where this part of my journey takes me, and look forward to merging my acting background into a long career solving new puzzles and helping people.

Photo by Eduardo Pastor on Unsplash