There's no question empathy is a must have soft skill for a researcher. I think there is also a tell in the customer facing metric. One half of a researchers job is to go out and gain data, knowledge, insights. The other half is that we need to pack up those insights, that empathy and transfer it to the entire team. It's a tall order. By utilizing storytelling and storytelling artifacts (like personas or user profiles for the groups we discover), we can get further, appealing to pathos and supporting with a few nuggets of logos. A lot of times, we make the mistake of drowning stakeholders in logos. Those that are customer facing have witnessed that story first hand. It's real to them. We need to make it real for the rest.
There's no question empathy is a must have soft skill for a researcher. I think there is also a tell in the customer facing metric. One half of a researchers job is to go out and gain data, knowledge, insights. The other half is that we need to pack up those insights, that empathy and transfer it to the entire team. It's a tall order. By utilizing storytelling and storytelling artifacts (like personas or user profiles for the groups we discover), we can get further, appealing to pathos and supporting with a few nuggets of logos. A lot of times, we make the mistake of drowning stakeholders in logos. Those that are customer facing have witnessed that story first hand. It's real to them. We need to make it real for the rest.