This IDEO empathy pictograph is a simple 4‑quadrant diagram with a person in the center and four labeled boxes around them: Say, Do, Think, and Feel. We used this perceptual map in every engagement as part of Design Research. Often it’s drawn on a whiteboard so teams can fill each quadrant with sticky notes from user research.
We interviewed people to qualify their words across these four dimensions in order to inspire how we might help them design new stuff. The point is never to validate - although some use it do so - but rather to assign accountability to someone real who might inspire us.
Shake it to the max
Today, the asymmetry of saying vs. doing is changing. Previously we could infer thinking from delayed outcomes … now we can observe - in near-real time: the ways society thinks.
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Verifying whether someone truly means what they say requires time, resources, and patience. Political manifestos almost never outlive short-term consequences; which is another way of saying politicos are incentivized to optimize for short-term results. Because of the latency between say and do, society must calibrate trust based on past actions.
Visible thinking
Say is the public script;
Do is the observable behavior;
in the past Think was partially verified by waiting for results born from rhetoric. For many issues the delay is effectively infinite as the person never intends to do what they say. Today, AI is enabling society to incorporate thinking into societal models in near real-time.
Feel remains elusive: perhaps the next frontier in a post-AI word.
The Top 10 Shows to Watch about the 1960s
Here is an example of how I thought about figuring out the best list of shows to watch about the 1960s: We Are All Editors
My post is an example of me saying + thinking; AI doing, and me subsequently feeling satisfied. Society is adapting to new politics of credibility; which is no longer limited to a function of past reputation. AI (e.g. foundational societal models processing human thinking in real-time) forces us to dynamically negotiate past reputation with present transparency.
People who prioritize short-term follow-through and long-term consistency may be in a better position to succeed than ever before … because we can observe how they think. Hiding behind performative speech as a result of outdated delayed verification will no longer trump The Trumps of society. The most skilled humans will pursue action devoid of excess vulgarity. But the key is to have a bias for action, which is now more transparent than ever, whether we realize it or not.
Moving towards a culture of actionable thought is a fascinating concept. How freaking exciting! I wish my Dad - an IIT Gold Medalist - were alive to see it.
Humans will continue to quarrel about what is good or valuable, yet when invisible thoughts begin to have more visible signatures we learn to see what we think more clearly. We can improve society by more rapidly aligning to solve challenges and push our collective limits.
