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Better Listening Equals
Better Design

Teaching architects and designers to leverage “soft skills” in pursuit of happier clients.

What is Empathy Powered Design?

What is Empathy Powered Design?

Empathy powered practice turns the traditional design process on its head to focus on engagement and active listening in a client-centered process. The underlying goal is leveraging soft skills that consistently result in happier clients.

How Does Empathy Powered Design Work?

Within this framework, a brilliant design (yes, we don’t forget about design!) is the byproduct. But it is not the end in and of itself. Design is the tool we use to understand and address our clients’ underlying motivations.

An empathy powered design process that is driven by a focus on interpersonal connection rather than internal expertise and inspiration has tangible benefits to the direct practitioner. It directly leads to a clearly bounded decision-making structure, fewer iterations, happier clients, and of course more profit.

An empathy powered design process that is driven by a focus on interpersonal connection rather than internal expertise and inspiration has tangible benefits to the direct practitioner. It directly leads to a clearly bounded decision-making structure, fewer iterations, happier clients, and of course more profit.

How Does Empathy Powered Design Work?

Budget matters, design matters, and schedule matters, but trust me when I tell you that most “direct practice” projects are actually driven by emotion. Empathy powered design gives you the tools to proactively address the underlying emotions while also solving for the design.

How does this work? We add some tools to your kit… soft skills that aren’t taught in design school like active listening, recognizing and addressing core emotions, responding effectively to conflict, translating motivations into design solutions. This is how we:

  • Ensure we correctly identify and solve for our clients’ underlying needs.
  • Build trust with our clients that can withstand the inevitable design and construction complications.
  • Pull impactful design solutions from within a scaffold of constraints.
  • Reduce revisions by helping our clients feel more confident making (and committing to) decisions throughout a project.
  • Increase overall client satisfaction with both the process and product.

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About Your Guide

As the son of an engineer and a family therapist, I almost certainly irritated both my parents by choosing architecture. And yet, they both certainly influenced my eventual career path.

I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with dual Master’s Degrees in Architecture and Social Work, through which I developed a unique perspective on the relationship between technical solutions and meaning, design service and client interaction. I quickly found a niche in direct practice designing projects that impact people on a personal level: homes, adaptive reuse, urban infill, and historic rehabilitation.

I now own a small design studio, Sequel Architecture + Interiors, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Over more than 25 years of direct practice, I have successfully guided literally hundreds of individual clients through the complex process of design and construction.

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Empathy Powered Design

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