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Researching Empathy in Software Development
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Hashini Gunatilake is a researcher exploring the role of empathy in developer-stakeholder interactions within software engineering. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Software Engineering at Monash University as part of the HumaniSE Lab to identify ways to improve software engineering processes and outcomes through empathetic practices. Her research contributions have been published in leading software engineering journals, including ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Information and Software Technology (IST), and the Journal of Systems and Software (JSS).
Sponsored by CodeCrafters - discount link
LINKS
- Hashini’s LinkedIn
- Hashini’s website
- Paper: Enablers and barriers of empathy in software developer and user interactions: a mixed methods case study
- HumaniSE Lab - Monash University
HOSTS
- Andrea Goulet LinkedIn | andreagoulet.com
- Ray Myers LinkedIn | Craft vs Cruft on YouTube
ABOUT EMPATHY IN TECH
Empathy in Tech is a non-profit project of Superbloom Design. Together, we’re on a mission to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry by:
- Closing the empathy skills gap by treating empathy as a technical skill.
- Teaching technical empathy through accessible, affordable, actionable training.
- Building community and breaking down harmful stereotypes and tropes.
- Promoting technical empathy for ethics, equity, and social justice.
Learn more at empathyintech.com
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Transcript
Empathy in Team Culture
00:00:01
Speaker
Empathy is one of these factors which helps you to build that culture, the culture that people feel safe to talk about their concerns. Only if we talk about our concerns, we can improve as people. It can improve as a team.
Technical Aspects of Empathy
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to Empathy in Tech, where we explore the deeply technical side of empathy. And the critical need for empathy in technology.
Introduction of Hashini Gunatilika
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm Andrea Goulet. And I'm Ray Myers.
00:00:31
Speaker
And today on the show, we have Hashini Gunatilika. Hashini is a researcher exploring the role of empathy in developer stakeholder interactions within software engineering. She's currently pursuing her PhD in software engineering at Monash University as part of the Humanize Lab to identify ways to improve software engineering processes and outcomes through empathic practices.
00:00:52
Speaker
Her research contributions have been published in leading software engineering journals including ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Information and Software Technology, and the Journal of Systems and Software.
00:01:05
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here, Hashini. Welcome to show. Thank you very much for having me. It's such a pleasure. I'm so would you start by excited to talk. Sorry I interrupted you.
00:01:18
Speaker
um Would you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hashini's Research Motivation
00:01:20
Speaker
What got you interested in empathy in software? Yeah, yeah, of course. So after graduating from university, I directly went into industry. I was in the industry for like four to five years.
00:01:34
Speaker
It was kind of my dream to become a ah being in the industry. But while working in the industry, I realized how toxic it can be sometimes. ah You have very long hours, the pressure is really high, and there are some amazing teams in some companies, but on the other hand,
00:01:54
Speaker
There are some teams which are not ah that good for yourself, your mental health. Like the main focus is work. So that get me into thinking, is this the life that I want to spend for the rest of my life?
00:02:08
Speaker
And then I was in chat with my bachelor supervisor. So he reminded me how much I used to love research. And that kind of sparked something in me that I should pursue something that I love.
00:02:25
Speaker
So I got into this research project, like I got into the PhD with John, ah my main supervisor, Monash.
Empathy Research in Software Engineering
00:02:35
Speaker
ah So ah John has, when I first looking for research opportunities,
00:02:41
Speaker
I figured out John has this amazing lab which is called Humanize where we talk about, where we research about lot of human aspects and how this human centric software engineering can be good for people.
00:02:56
Speaker
how human aspects can be good for software engineering. So that is where I got into the research of human aspects. And when I first started, i wanted to do something the intersection of developers and their stakeholders or users.
00:03:14
Speaker
So we were exploring a lot of human aspects. We did a systematic literature review to find out what are the opportunities out there. And empathy just came on It was interesting to all of us.
00:03:27
Speaker
I love that. And I think what got me so excited, like the way we connected was you reached out to me and told me that you had used some of my work from the industry talking about empathy and how we were using at our software company.
00:03:43
Speaker
um You included that in some of your research. Tell me little bit about kind of when you did that original survey, There's not a lot out there. That's what I was finding too. Tell me a little bit, what is the research landscape around intersection of empathy and software right now?
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah. So when I started, there wasn't any paper in software engineering that is directly related to empathy. So we had a really hard time figuring out what is the way to go So we found lot of work out there in psychology, neuroscience,
00:04:21
Speaker
in that domain and so we thought there are a lot of models available for empathy, lot of ah techniques, frameworks for empathy, but they're all in other domains.
00:04:34
Speaker
So we first started from there. We tried to identify some models which could be reused in software engineering. So year one was one thing that I found ah during that research and also we found several others like empathy maps, there are engineering models for empathy.
00:04:55
Speaker
So we found several of these but after a while, after that study I would say there were several other papers that came up that we found from the empathy regarding empathy from software engineering researchers.
00:05:10
Speaker
So empathy is getting kind of ah I wouldn't say it is very popular at the moment, but there are growing research. It's not just me now. There are several and other researchers in the field who are doing research on empathy.
00:05:25
Speaker
And it is so good to say that because when I started, it was just me and I was thinking, why there's no one else? It's a good problem. It's good thing to have. But when you have a community that talks about empathy in software engineering,
00:05:41
Speaker
That feels really nice. Now, when I was ah computer science student, i the closest thing i could recall tying into empathy that I was aware of was a subfield called human-computer interaction, which...
Empathy vs. Experience in Tech
00:05:57
Speaker
yeah um which I think the industrial term nowadays would be UX, user experience, you know. um And there's recently this this kind of spinoff of developer productivity that that's called DX, developer experience.
00:06:14
Speaker
You know, there's this sort of strain of people that that have this view that, you know, the... experience of the team is kind of central to to driving good outcomes. I wonder if you have any comment on on where these different areas of focus, how that relates to the the area you're studying.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think um when we talk about user experience, it mostly ah ties to the accessibility, all the accessibility related things. But ah developer experience is such a good point.
00:06:48
Speaker
There are a lot of research around ah software engineering about developer experience, productivity. But the problem is that it's not directly empathy.
00:07:01
Speaker
Because when you talk about empathy, it it just talks about um how you can understand someone's perspectives, feelings, share their feelings.
00:07:12
Speaker
But in um when you talk about developer experience, it might be more broader than that, I would say, because in the developer experience or the user experience, you look at how you...
00:07:27
Speaker
Especially in user experience. You look at how users would feel, what is the experience users just get from the software. But um to measure that or to make sure users get a positive experience, you should definitely have empathy.
00:07:44
Speaker
But it is not directly talked directly. in the in the research that's on news experience. Some papers do, some papers don't. And when it comes to our study, would say we talk about a lot of, so one of the fascinating studies that we did recently is to find out what is the impact of empathy.
Impact of Empathy on Mental Health and Practices
00:08:08
Speaker
So when I talk about empathy with others in this field, one of the questions that always come up is, so what's the impact of empathy? What is real research around that?
00:08:21
Speaker
So we did this study with industry practitioners. We asked them directly what is the impact of empathy, having empathy and not having empathy. So there we found out two two major facets, like impact on mental health and well-being, and also the impact on software development practices.
00:08:42
Speaker
So when it comes to, I think the impact that we found in this research is mainly tied towards the developer experience that you mentioned, Ray.
00:08:53
Speaker
because when it comes to um mental health and well-being, we talk about how the practitioners, mental health and well-being, so what is the emotional impact of empathy ah and ah what is the social impact, occupational impact.
00:09:10
Speaker
So we talk about these three things when it comes to the mental health and well-being of the practitioners, which is directly tied towards developed experience, I guess. And then we also talk about the software development practices, how empathy helps for the success of a software project.
00:09:28
Speaker
We talk about how it helps for the productivity, risk management, what is its impact on business alignment and all the other other things that go with project management.
00:09:42
Speaker
So we talk about all of these things in our study. There's a lot of research out there. for a user experience and some for the developer experience, but I don't think most of them directly talk about empathy.
00:09:57
Speaker
What were some of the findings that you that you found
Emotional Responses to Empathy
00:10:01
Speaker
from that? yeah I'm assuming empathy helps, right? Of course. Yeah. And I think that's been the kind of challenging thing is that so many of us have this like really lived experience and we've seen it, but having that in kind of more measured and studied, there aren't lot of metrics. So I'm really excited about your work.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, so we found, ah we kind of categorized our impact into two different categories, like impact of empathy on mental health and well-being of practitioners, and then impact on the software development practices, like I said before.
00:10:38
Speaker
So in the impact on mental health and well-being, we found that having empathy is really helpful. And we we kind of found that people have positive emotional responses such as feeling less pressured, less stressed, they feel valued, appreciated, understood because of empathy.
00:11:00
Speaker
And also we found that due to lack of empathy or due to absence of empathy, people feel lot of negative emotions like frustration, they are stressed, they are angry, sometimes disappointed and they are guilty.
00:11:18
Speaker
So all these things comes with ah lack of empathy.
Empathy in Team Dynamics
00:11:23
Speaker
And also ah we we looked at what are long-term psychological effects.
00:11:29
Speaker
And when we look at that, we found a lot of positive ones, especially empathy helps to improve mental health and well-being of practitioners, helps to prevent burnout.
00:11:41
Speaker
And also, if ah not having empathy, it is a cause that made practitioners feel burnout. We have a lot of interesting findings.
00:11:52
Speaker
So that is just the emotional impact. And if you talk about how empathy affects the job related factors such as work life balance, job security, professional growth.
00:12:05
Speaker
So we found having empathy is helpful and not having empathy has some negative impact on practitioners' work c life quality. and also empathy helps for having positive team dynamics, a better communication, collaboration, and it kind of creates a very supportive and a very supportive team and work culture, which really helps with everything.
00:12:35
Speaker
You know, when you have a very supportive team, in a software project when you all work towards a common goal and you have people who would always sleep be there for you in this process that really means a lot i'm speaking from experience i used to work with some amazing teams even during very tight deadlines Even after they finish their workload, they will still be there asking whether you need some help.
00:13:04
Speaker
ah So most of these mental health and well-being impact that is talked in other domains. some Some are talked in other domains, but we were able to confirm those That's the case the same case in software engineering as well. And also adding to more because, you know, software engineering, we have different industry, highly technical with high pressure, tight deadlines.
00:13:32
Speaker
I think that is unique to software engineering. and also when it comes to impact on empathy uh on the software development practices we found that the presence of empathy helps to improve products the product robustness the called quality it helps to improve product and also it helps it has a positive impact on project management project planning and goal setting people mentioned that
00:14:03
Speaker
When others have empathy, when they have empathy, it leads to more realistic goals, helps to achieve ah whatever the project goals
Collaboration and Quality Improvement
00:14:14
Speaker
most successfully and helps to improve workflows, which is really great in software engineering.
00:14:22
Speaker
And also we found that having empathy helps them to have better relationships with the customers and other stakeholders so this is this is one of the main things that impact the customer satisfaction so they mentioned it helps to improve customer satisfaction and also meet the stakeholder expectations I think that is something very important in software engineering. If our product does not meet customers' needs, then what is the whole point of developing that product?
00:14:57
Speaker
So empathy kind of helps you to improve that satisfaction, ah customer satisfaction. And it also helps productivity. It's not just something that is helpful for the users or the stakeholders.
00:15:13
Speaker
it is It is helpful for the team itself. Because when you are empathetic, it helps developers to be more efficient because everyone when everyone around you is empathetic, they help you to understand the requirements better.
00:15:30
Speaker
It makes your works make work faster and efficiency kind of improves. Those are some of the like the expected findings that we had. But also, so we found some unexpected.
00:15:45
Speaker
We found, a ah due to the nature of software engineering, I would say, we found that sometimes empathy empathy fatigue fatigue can be there. So when you are too empathetic, you can feel overwhelmed.
00:15:58
Speaker
So that is one of the things, one of the negative effects that we found from the presence of empathy. So we recommend being mindful about your scope because we all as humans, we have a certain scope for ourselves.
00:16:17
Speaker
We have our own problems and we have other problems and there's a limit that we all can cope. So ah being mindful about that is one of the things that we recommend.
Challenges of Empathy Management
00:16:30
Speaker
And also sometimes practitioners mentioned when you are too empathetic, ah this trade off, because ah in the industry, the main point would be to get the things done, get the work done, no matter how.
00:16:48
Speaker
So when you're too empathetic, there's a trend that you could get excessive work, your empathy could be exploited and you would be assigned excessive work. So that is one thing.
00:17:00
Speaker
that they mentioned and ah it could lead to stress and burnout because of those factors. And sometimes some some some of the practitioners mentioned that when they're too empathetic towards their colleagues, ah for example, think ah this is think there's a tester who's too empathetic towards their developers. So there's there's set deadlines that developers have have to hand over this feature by this date so the testers have enough time to test it before releasing it to the customers.
00:17:35
Speaker
But think developers aren't able to finish during their time. They need more time. It's understandable. They need more time due to the complexities. um So the tester gets, have,
00:17:50
Speaker
less time than initially planned. And they had to spend night, ah like overnight, they had to test overnight or they had to spend time outside of work for this ah because they were okay with developer getting to them late and their time was not extended.
00:18:12
Speaker
So that is kind of a trade off that we found. They were too empathetic towards the developer They were okay with whatever the time that the developer gave the feature to them.
00:18:23
Speaker
But they had to work over
Empathy's Real-World Benefits in Development
00:18:26
Speaker
time. That kind of had an innovative impact on their work-life balance. Because if this is one-time thing, they mentioned that if this is one-time thing, it's okay.
00:18:35
Speaker
But it's not just one time. It's happening all the time. yeah Those are some of the things ah that we discovered. That is awesome. I'm so excited that you're doing this research because like what you're talking about is so many people's lived experience. like yeah I spoke at a software testing conference and like literally that's what everybody was talking about was how frustrated it was. you know First of all, there's like the past the potato kind of operational problem. And if everybody was kind of in the same room, then you know actually collaborating, then there's that.
00:19:09
Speaker
But I'm really excited because that... What we found um at the software company that i co-founded and led, empathy was baked into the culture from the very beginning and our technical practices.
00:19:21
Speaker
And what we saw very regularly, which is why I started writing about it, was that we would inherit a legacy code project And then our customers would be blown away because we could deliver so much faster. Like, you know, we could get progress started within a month, whereas they had been working with another team for almost a year and hadn't seen the same amount of progress. And I think a lot of it was...
00:19:48
Speaker
You know in our onboarding process, there is a lot of like exploration. What does this really mean in the prioritization? And I also just really love the way you phrase like know your personal scope.
00:19:59
Speaker
I think that's just such a good tagline. Yeah, I'm really excited. That's great research. Thank you. hi Ray here, and I'd like to take a quick moment to tell you about CodeCrafters. In my career, I've helped a lot of people get to the next level as software developers, and whether you're just starting out or looking to branch out into new challenges, one theme that comes up again and again and again is that people just don't have the right project, and they bounce from tutorial to tutorial.
00:20:26
Speaker
They don't get to integrate what they've learned into a real context.
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00:20:29
Speaker
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00:20:39
Speaker
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00:20:50
Speaker
You can find a discount link for CodeCrafters in the show notes. And if you use it, you'll also be supporting empathy in tech. All right, now back to the show.
00:21:03
Speaker
So I'd like to go back to one of the effects that you mentioned, just as a way of, you know, suggesting what the mechanism is, because it's it's kind of counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of people to say, for instance, that.
00:21:19
Speaker
empathy increases code quality, that these things would be related.
Communication and Code Quality
00:21:24
Speaker
like And yeah you've claimed like a lot of really interesting effects, all sorts of effects that we would love to be able to achieve.
00:21:31
Speaker
Zerring it on code quality, for example, I know that that probably your your research was establishing more that the effect is there, and then it's kind of up to your interpretation to say, what is the way that that is achieved? But could you you know give some kind of account for how you believe that empathy may be having this effect on on code quality?
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, of course. That's a great question. This interpretation comes from lot of practitioners and the way they have said this might be different and the way I say it to the way I say it But to so so what happened, what I mean by improving code quality is So we had ah interviews with developers and also with their stakeholders like product owners, testers, business analysts, a lot of other stakeholders.
00:22:23
Speaker
So they both described how empathy helps to improve code quality. So empathy helps to foster kind of a collaborative approach to writing and testing the code with developers and testers.
00:22:38
Speaker
So one of the things that came up during one of our interviews is um when developers are pretty empathetic towards the testers, they kind of wanted to know how they're testing.
00:22:53
Speaker
how the how how how the testing happens. So when they got an idea of how the testing happens, they wanted to write code with extra safeguards, extra measures to improve customer experience, user experience, like to ah have extra validations, to think about think proactively about the issues that the customers might have while using these features.
00:23:24
Speaker
So that helped developers to have better code. So when it comes to testing, there were less issues compared to previous rounds. And also, some developers mentioned they have a really good relationship with the testers.
00:23:42
Speaker
They kind of give the testers some kind of early early release of the features. So that they were able to detect these bugs early, which could frustrate customers if they get into the release.
00:23:57
Speaker
So Empathy helped developers to improve the understanding of quality assurance process, and it helps them to identify these bugs earlier.
00:24:09
Speaker
So that helped to improve the code, and that helped testers to have the the limited time they have, ah they could spend it more on improving or testing better things or improving documentation, ah which kind of helped customers in the in the long run. Because when testers have less buggy product,
00:24:34
Speaker
They don't have to worry about every single aspect. They can kind of focus on the next step of the quality, and then the customers get a better product. Do you get what I mean?
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah, actually, this is ah surprisingly close to things that I have learned to do. like Sometimes they're called the tester or the QA, but oftentimes, even if there's not that like designation, there is someone who is disproportionately shouldering the burden of testing the product and you get onto a new team. Like what I do, I find that person and I guarantee you someone's not listening to them as much as they need to.
00:25:10
Speaker
And all of a sudden, all this valuable insight will come out of them. If you, if you just ask them about how their, their experience is going, trying to test this thing. and ah you know improvements that you can make will just we just come out of that right away.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's not surprising to me in some sense, though I am i guess I'm pleasantly surprised that the the research showed something that was so close to my own experience. Have you encountered either resistance or just challenges in how to approach this type of of data as you've been carving this out? Because you mentioned there's there wasn't a lot of pre-existing research that was like this. So you know whether methodology challenges or resistance people had to going into this new area, what kind of challenges did you see?
Research Methods for Empathy in Tech
00:25:59
Speaker
um I think methodology-wise, uh there were some challenges because as i said there was not a lot of research out there so uh the first study that we did this is not the first study that we did the first study that i did which empathy came up was a study it's a university project where we had some developers, some designers, some end users.
00:26:28
Speaker
So we had a project, ah like ah ah the developers were from final year bachelor students, and the designers were also from our design faculty.
00:26:39
Speaker
And then we had end users who could who we could contact because this project was developed for a specific condition, condition that women have.
00:26:52
Speaker
It's called PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, to expand it. So this project was the developers, designers, and with and end users.
00:27:04
Speaker
There was an app called, in in Australia, we have an app called Ask PCOS, which helps women to improve their lifestyle, women with PCOS.
00:27:15
Speaker
So there's a paper process going behind this app. This app is only used for the information purposes. So there was this ah smart goal setting process, which we wanted to implement into that.
00:27:28
Speaker
So that is the project goal that the developers and the users had. Designers were the talking to the users and then they came up with some designs and then those designs were used for the development.
00:27:41
Speaker
So there was one point where developers had interactions with the end users directly, where they showed the new features of the application to the users and ask them to try out.
00:27:56
Speaker
They experienced the first-hand difficulties of the users while using that. So I was observing all these.
00:28:07
Speaker
And during that study, we first wanted to, as as you directly as you correctly mentioned, Ray, we first wanted to explore user experience.
00:28:18
Speaker
But during the process, empathy came up. We realized empathy is very important in this in this collaboration. So that is how we started exploring empathy.
00:28:31
Speaker
And in that study, we found what were the factors which enabled developers and users empathy and what were the factors that were hindering their empathy. empathy That is the first study, the first qualitative study, I would say, we did on empathy.
00:28:49
Speaker
And then after doing that study, we realized, okay, there's potential. We could explore this more deeply. And also after that study, people started asking me, other researchers just started asking me, so, okay, you know, these are the enablers. These these are the things that makes you more empathetic.
00:29:09
Speaker
And these are the things that hinder your empathy. But what happens? What happens when you have empathy? What are the proof that empathy helps software engineering? So we thought this is a good word question worth answering because no matter what you do, if you don't talk about and impact, everyone is going to ask you about impact. That's the that's the question that you're going to get.
00:29:31
Speaker
So our next study, we wanted to explore the impact of empathy or the and lack of empathy more deeply. That's where we started working on this study.
00:29:44
Speaker
And in that study, we found the impact that I talked about. And also, ah we tried to understand what makes, again, what makes people empathetic, what makes these developers and stakeholders empathetic, what are the barriers to their empathy, and what are the some of the strategies that they follow to overcome these barriers.
00:30:05
Speaker
So that's how this study was put together. And the in the design phase, when it comes to this big study, it was quite difficult. We had to refine our interview guide several times. We had pilot interviews because ah asking people to talk about empathy is, ah for some people, it's not normal.
00:30:28
Speaker
And we realized that when we say people this is the definition of empathy, it doesn't work for them. So we asked them what empathy means to them in their professional life as a software developer or a stakeholder and in general.
00:30:45
Speaker
So we started from there and then we used their definition to frame the rest of the questions. We asked them what are the experiences that they were empathetic and what happens due to that empathy and what are the experiences they had ah having experienced empathy from the others and not having experienced empathy from others and not being empathetic themselves and what was the impact.
00:31:13
Speaker
That was our approach. ah to the questionnaire, the interview, because if we ask them to stick to this definition, this is the definition, it won't work for them.
00:31:25
Speaker
That is not something close to their heart. So we wanted to explore their experiences from what is close to them. That's for how we managed to tackle that. Yeah, that's awesome. And I think like you're dead on with the impact. I remember. So 2009, when I came in to software and was like, empathy is going thing.
00:31:48
Speaker
I had a consultant who said, you can't say empathy and software in the same sentence because you will be laughed out of the industry. And seeing how far we've come and seeing the, nope, you were wrong. Like it feels kind of validating, but we also still, like you said, this research is very much in its infancy.
00:32:08
Speaker
And this is really about... changing the way that the industry approaches this. What hopes do you have for the industry now that you are doing this
Incorporating Empathy in Agile Practices
00:32:20
Speaker
research? And how do you imagine that your research might be incorporated into a developer's day day workflow?
00:32:27
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's a really great question. So no matter how much research that we do, if that is not incorporated into the industry, there's a value to the research community, but there's no value to the industry.
00:32:41
Speaker
But we do all this research ah with the hope that industry would someday improve using our results. So for me, this study was one of my personal favorites because when I was listening to the experiences of the practitioners, I could revisit my own experience as ah as a practitioner.
00:33:02
Speaker
So when I first started as a fresh graduate, Industry was was not so good for me. I didn't understand many things and it it it it wasn't quite the thing that I expected.
00:33:15
Speaker
So there's a lot of learning, lot of um sort of things that I learned through the process. it's Sometimes i realize I wondered whether I'm in the wrong industry.
00:33:27
Speaker
and that same thing was mentioned by one of the tele developers so it really really was my personal favorite because i could see some of the things that i i have experienced i could see it from their lens too so it was not just me there were other people who felt the same way so it is ah kind of a self-validating study for me so As a result, i really wanted to as we really wanted to, as a team, to do something, ah create some guidelines or recommendations for software practitioners, how they could manage these difficult situations.
00:34:10
Speaker
So in our paper, we propose some of some guidelines for software practitioners and we tell them how they can incorporate this into their practices.
00:34:21
Speaker
We just don't tell them be empathetic, be open-minded. We don't tell them that. we asked that we we We took some ah specific scenarios and we asked them to be, we helped them to incorporate that into their lives.
00:34:36
Speaker
into their software's work life. For example, I would say um we recommend having, ah in if you're having agile processes, we recommend being empathetic in all your agile meetings because in our discussion with the practitioners, one thing that came up was if people are empathetic during this ah sprint planning,
00:35:03
Speaker
retrospectives, then you have the chance to talk about, ah so when they are empathetic during the planning, ah they were able to assign more realistic work.
00:35:17
Speaker
ah You are not overloaded. And when they are empathetic during retrospectives, the other members, that the team members were not afraid to talk about their concerns.
00:35:28
Speaker
They could identify what were the factors that that were not good, that when that affected negatively for everyone during this sprint and they could improve.
00:35:40
Speaker
But if you have a very rigid culture and if you are very afraid to speak up during retrospectives, then you're never going to improve. So empathy is one of these factors which helps you to build that culture, the culture that people feel safe to talk about their concerns because only if we talk about our concerns, we can improve as people.
00:36:07
Speaker
We can improve as a team because ah we spent a lot of time working. As a software practitioner who used to work in the industry, I could say that it is not just eight hours per day.
00:36:20
Speaker
You spent more than that per day working. And that is, even if you work eight hours a day, that is like one third of your day. So if you don't have an empathetic workplace, people who will support you, a team will support you during one part of your day, yeah you're not going to feel good. You're not going to feel good about your life even after work.
00:36:46
Speaker
So this is really important. And that's why we tell people, that's why we recommend them these guidelines. Like try to be empathetic in this,
00:36:58
Speaker
certain situations at least. If you can't, ah we understand that we all can't be empathetic all the time. it's not It's not how we're meant to be. mean we We have our, as I mentioned before, we have our own scope.
00:37:13
Speaker
If you are too empathetic, we are going to explode. We are going to be overwhelmed. But there are places that you can be empathetic. So one of those things, agile practices, during these agile meetings, and we tell them,
00:37:28
Speaker
but When you are providing feedback, try to think, try to think whether your feedback is constructive. Don't just tell a new employee or new developer, oh ah ah this is garbage, this is not bia how we work and you don't understand anything. Don't tell them like that. chuck Just try to be empathetic.
00:37:50
Speaker
Try to think about how you were when you were first graduate and ah try to be more constructive in providing feedback. These things, I think they are known to people.
00:38:05
Speaker
ah People know of these things ah as good practices, but they don't really p apply them into work. So we thought of creating some kind of guidelines and telling them how they could incorporate this directly into their practices.
00:38:24
Speaker
So, and we also recommend them to have backup plans. So one of the things that <unk>t one of the practitioners mentioned during our study was ah they had a family emergency during one of their critical projects.
Emergency Preparedness and Empathy
00:38:41
Speaker
That person was the only one who knew how to complete that portion of the project. And it was um because of that, the team didn't want this person to go and leave.
00:38:54
Speaker
even though that is a very like ah critical emergency of their family. So they were like um very upset. And the the only thing they could do is they resigned.
00:39:07
Speaker
They resigned from the job and never came back. And even after a few years, they got other offers from the same company. They didn't go back. That's because of the bad experience they had.
00:39:20
Speaker
And I think these are very extreme cases and that should not happen in the industry. People should feel like they're appreciated, they're valued for their work and not that they're being exploited.
00:39:34
Speaker
The time to be with family. is stolen because they are good at their work. I don't think anyone should feel like that. So that's why we recommend having backup plans.
00:39:45
Speaker
So what you do do if this kind of a situation happen, can you release this person? Can you have someone as a backup to train with them?
00:39:57
Speaker
Someone who can manage the project if this person is not there. Is there a way that you can delay some of the non-critical tasks, a way that you can talk to customers and explain these are human conditions.
00:40:10
Speaker
You can't plan for them. They are unexpected. So can you do something about that? We provide them some practical guidelines, I would say. And this is during one of during the same study.
00:40:24
Speaker
And we did another study to expand on these practical guidelines. We asked lot of practitioners, we we gave them these guidelines and asked them how they would implement some of these guidelines in practice.
00:40:39
Speaker
What are the top five guidelines that they would adopt to their work life? So they told us different, they picked different guidelines and they gave us how they would improve.
00:40:52
Speaker
And of course, there were some practitioners who mentioned I was really surprised to see that, but then again, people have different personalities. There were some people who mentioned, um i would say, I became a software developer because I don't want to work with people.
00:41:09
Speaker
I just want to do my work and that's it. I don't want to talk to others. I don't want to ah do these things. That's why I became a developer. So there were a few responses like that.
00:41:24
Speaker
So it was very surprising for me to see because software engineering is not a one man job. You have to talk to people. You are not the person who's going to use the software that you build.
00:41:37
Speaker
It's someone else. If you don't develop the software that's they want, then what's the point of all whole development? If you don't talk to the business, they're the ones who are going to sell your product.
00:41:50
Speaker
If you don't cater their requirements, then what's the point? I love that. And I can't wait to explore even further, like some of the practices and like specific things. Cause in my experience, that's what, that's what developers want. yeah Because when I was ah originally talking about empathy, you know,
00:42:10
Speaker
early about 15 years ago, that was exactly the question I got all the time was like, you're basically telling me I have more empathy. And that's kind of useless information. And it was like, I want something that's concrete, make it more and more and more concrete. And I had limited information. So that's why I think your research is so, so important.
00:42:27
Speaker
So I think we'll definitely have you back as you continue to have more so that you can report out on ah on all the great stuff that we should be doing. We have um one kind of final question that we ask everyone.
00:42:39
Speaker
What do you think is the most important thing that should happen at the intersection of empathy and technology? oh and That's a great question. I have two things in mind at the moment.
00:42:53
Speaker
ah The most important thing I would say is the actions, so the empathic responses. We talk about cognitive empathy, like understanding others' perspectives or emotions and emotional empathy, and sharing the emotions.
00:43:10
Speaker
But very rarely we talk about these empathic actions, empathic responses or the behavioral empathy. So we may understand others' perspectives, emotions and share the emotions.
00:43:22
Speaker
But do we really take action based on that empathy? Because if you take action based on your empathy, empathy it creates a really supportive community.
00:43:35
Speaker
That's what we really want in our life, right? We have a family in our personal life who will always be there for you. And in your work life, if you have that same supportive environment, think about the things that you could do.
00:43:50
Speaker
you You can do amazing things. For example, me, I've noticed that I've experienced that people do amazing things when they're supported, when they're appreciated. So I think the most important thing for me would be the actions driven by empathy.
00:44:06
Speaker
If you can do something to make someone's life better, someone's life easier by understanding the perspective, of the emotions, their line of work,
00:44:19
Speaker
I think that's the most important thing. So this has been a great conversation. Why don't you tell us some places that people can get in touch with you or find out more about your work?
Connecting with Hashini
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, of course. um So my LinkedIn profile is there. It's Hashini Gunatilaka. ah That is a great place. I'm i'm quite responsive to LinkedIn.
00:44:43
Speaker
And then I have a website. It's just fantastic. Hashini G H A S H I N I G. daco Yeah. So that is, those two places would be good, I think, because I'm quite responsive over there. And we'll link to that in the show notes. Does your personal website, does that have links to all your research?
00:45:02
Speaker
Of course. Yay. All my studies are listed there and all the contact information is listed there. I'm so excited. I can't wait to dig in. Okay. Thanks so much for coming on the show and thank everyone for listening as well.
00:45:16
Speaker
As a reminder, Empathy in Tech is a nonprofit project of Superbloom. Together, we're on a mission to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry by closing the empathy skills gap and treating empathy as a technical skill. Teaching technical empathy through accessible, affordable and actionable training, building a community and breaking down harmful stereotypes and tropes and promoting technical empathy for ethics, equity and social justice.
00:45:42
Speaker
So if you found this conversation interesting, head over to empathyandtech.com to keep the conversation going. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.