Understanding anxiety and building empathy

An overview of how understanding a broader context of the use of products that we design can help us gain empathy, minimize anxiety and accessibility problems

Vildana Lojo Babić
UX Collective
Published in
5 min readJun 2, 2020
Photo by Unsplash of a heart held by two people
Photo by Unsplash

WWe, digital designers and UX-ers, often take a lot of pride when our work is described as seamless and beautiful. But nowadays, when the world is struggling with the pandemic, social challenges and racism it is of utmost importance to understand that the people we are designing for are living and breathing creatures. Users are facing different challenges, emotions, and anxieties every day while using our designs.

Designing with greater empathy and awareness for the interaction context should be imperative in product design. That is why I am sharing a couple of thoughts about context and what could trigger anxieties during the human-computer interaction (HCI) including a couple of initiatives and terms to look into as a start point for understanding accessibility and empathy in design.

Let’s begin…

What is Context?

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Context (noun | con·​text | kän-ˌtekst) is the sum of interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs.

In terms of digital product design understanding context gives us a clearer perspective on what is happening between our solution and users beyond interface.

There are many types of contexts or context perspectives that can help us understand conditions under our users and products live, such as:

  • Spatial
  • Technological
  • Physiological
  • Psychological
  • Social
  • Context of market and business

All of these different types of contexts if not addressed can facilitate or witness users real-time anxiety and insecurity which in the long run will lead to lack of trustworthiness in solutions and products we provide.

What About Anxiety?

According to Oxford dictionary:

Anxiety (noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.ə.ti/) to users means experiencing uncomfortable feeling of worry about something that might happen or general feeling of fear and worry.

Anxiety can be something that is chronic or diagnosed as a part of mental or health state or it can be temporary.

Anxiety Triggered by Disability

Chronic anxiety that is induced by physiological state is mostly consequence of some kind of disability. According to the World Health Organizations in 2017 there were more than 1 billion people living with some kind of disability which is 15% of the world population.

Image indicating that +1billion people which is 15% of population suffer have some kind of disability.
According to the worldhealth.org in there were more than 1 billion people living with disabilities in 2017.

On top of that the number of elderly people has grown to 617 million people in 2017 which is the 8.5% of the world population.

Image showing elderly couple sitting and indication that there are 617 million elderly people which is 8.5% of population.
According to the worldhealth.org in there were more than 617 million elderly people in 2017. | Photo by Unsplash

Disabilities can come in many forms. For example, it could be some kind of vision impairment such as dyslexia or some kind of hearing impairment.

Here is a great example of how people with dyslexia see interfaces and text created by Viktor Windell:

Animated image showcasing how dyslexic people see text.
See detailed preview at https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea

But many times forget to pay attention to details and design with all people in mind. I’ve seen too often how designers create UI with low contrast or developers forget or avoid to use semantic markup due to the rise of Javascript frameworks which disables users to navigate through web pages by using keyboards.

Anxiety Triggered by Mental Condition

Anxiety is one of the 4 most widespread mental conditions in the world accompanied by depression and / or bipolar disorder.

Table showing overview of diagnosed mental conditions in the world. Depression 3.4% of population, Anxiety 3.8%.
State of diagnosed mental conditions in the world according to ourworlddata.org from 2017.

And living with anxiety and mental conditions feels like you need to pay attention to every details, to every small micro animation or gif that you see on the website because something bad could / would happen. Every button or form needs your attention and you need to respond to all.

Or for someone with depression, the perception of colors and contrast becomes less prominent, and everything becomes more grayish and darker.

Image showing how people see contrast with and without depression.
Simulation how contrast is perceived with and without depression.

How to Start Making a Change?

But, destining for all people and with accessibility in mind does not have to be hard, there are couple of great examples and solutions such as:

IFTTT (If This Than That) App

Enables users create custom applets or on demand actions that interlink different apps.

This helps users complete their daily jobs or tasks faster and seamlessly making it look just like one command after it is being set up.

Image showing If This Then That App Screenshot.
IFTTT App Screenshot

Dark UI Mode

Entire UI trend of dark modes for operational systems and apps is focused on enhancing contrast and making interface more readable in different contexts (reading at night etc.) and for different users.

Image showing Youtube Settings mobile screen in dark mode.

Accessible Systems and Browsers

Having accessible systems and browsers and consequently accessible digital products has become a norm and imperative so users can navigate and interact in different ways.

Image showing mobile screenshot with option to set accessibility.

Step 1: Start With Learning About Accessibility Guidelines

Luckily there are many guidelines and accessibility initiatives that we can start learning from and implementing in in our future designs such as:

Step 2: Empathize With The Users and …

  • Design motion consciously and intentionally
  • Always provide reassurance and confirmation
  • Design Flows that are easy to complete and make users feel safe
  • Remember that Less is Even More and optimizing interactions and enabling users who feel anxiety to focus should be a priority

This post shares my insights and ideas from the talk I had at the WebCamp 2019.

Vildana is experienced Product Designer with Masters degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. She is the founder of Sarajevo Designs Meetups, and currently works as a Design Team Lead with Five Agency in Zagreb and New York.

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Vildana Lojo Babić

Product Design Manager @Booking.com Previously Design Leader @Infobip and @fivenyc. Architecture MA. Sarajevo Designs Community Founder.