Schooled in empathy
Last week, a foreign national went to a Philippine village to pitch an artificial intelligence (AI) data center, which he wanted to build on their land. When the questions came, he grew angry, walked out, and cussed at the media who asked him for a statement.
While many were incensed by his behavior, some online users called the village backward for its hostility, for refusing to listen to reason, for not allowing industry to help them. Local leaders, however, insisted that the event was a public consultation. They wanted the foreign national to first talk to the people.
There is an edit to that last sentence, and it has been informed by months of work on a boot camp with the Department of Science and Technology’s Science Education Institute. Since June, we have walked through the process of human-centered design (HCD) with college scholars from across the country.
HCD begins with the perspective of the user, not the wishes of the designer. In June, we trained the scholars to identify and describe stakeholders and their context. In July, we trained them to observe and interview specific people in specific communities. They had to talk to people about their daily lives, their goals, their challenges, their dreams. They had to ask for stories and listen. They had to be curious.
Last weekend, we trained them to distill their interviews, observations, and background research into a point of view (POV), a statement that articulates the problem as people experience it. The POV statement has to be so precise that an outsider must be able to vividly imagine the person and their problem, and the designer has to clearly imagine a potential intervention.
This clarity comes from empathizing with people, not pitching infrastructure. It comes from understanding their problems and their lives, rather than expecting them to instantly see technology as a solution.
In one of our open forums, a student voiced everyone’s worry: their interviews revealed that the country’s problems went beyond education, access, and money. The system was broken. Politics ruined everything. How could they solve such gigantic problems?
“You’re not here to make a solution for all people for all time,” I reminded them, “you’re here to design an intervention for one group whose lives you now know so well.”
The next day, the students read out their POV statements at our online workshop—and what clarity they showed.
They wanted to work with farmers who contended with unfair pricing, insect pests, or broken supply chains. They wanted to help fisherfolk who dealt with unpredictable weather or contaminated water. They had spoken to students who needed better laboratory classes, drivers who labored under long routes and high gas prices, the hungry, the afraid, the earnest but disorganized, the willing but poor.
Their solutions came in the form of software to manage inventory, connect farmers directly to institutions that needed specific crops, or provide students with virtual laboratory experience. There were digital interactive maps, passports to help farmers navigate complicated markets, websites to convey grievances to the offices concerned, water storage systems for small businesses, low-cost farm devices for smallholder farmers.
Everything was vivid and workable. The students had made no assumptions. They had first asked, and then listened.
The sentence earlier should have read thus: the leaders wanted the foreign national to talk to people by first asking about their lives and recognizing them as persons in a community, not obstacles to an agenda.
He should have asked questions before making any kind of pitch, because technology must never turn people invisible—because any promise of progress must not make people nameless.
Let’s tell the story again. A story must always contain a context, names, and details.
Last week, Daniel Stefan Robertsen, a Norwegian national, went to a public consultation in Barangay Abilay Sur, Oton, Iloilo. He pitched a 50-megawatt AI data center, which he wanted to build on land in a province with strained water resources and an unstable electric grid.
He was there to correct misunderstandings, he said, because he had heard rumors that lacked information. It is unclear whether he first asked people about their lives, needs, and actual problems.
A lawyer, Annie Rose Paro, asked him how the center would use and manage water. Robertsen appeared irritated. He responded that he wasn’t forcing people to accept the project.
He grew hostile as the questions kept coming. He walked out, past the media whom he cussed at and threatened with legal action.
Our young scholars are now centuries ahead in their approach. They know that going to a community means being humble before people who lead complex lives and who have their own knowledge about the world.
They know that good design begins with listening to stories rather than making assumptions. It means recognizing humans—and it is that kind of respect, heart, and compassion that no technology or promise of progress can ever replace.
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
