I saw an interesting example of empathy today on the soap label.
“No unnecessary ingredients” is a funny statement. Mostly because I doubt that there were ever unnecessary ingredients in the product. More ingredients means higher costs and lower profits, thus there was no reason for a manufacturer to ever include ingredients that didn’t serve a purpose.
I can picture a conversation between marketing team and the chemistry team.
Marketing says: “We heard from the customers and think the product contains too many ingredients that are not necessary.”
Chemistry: “What do they know about science? All of ingredients are carefully selected to provide the best cleaning experience.”
Marketing: “Let’s eliminate a couple of the least crucial ingredients, then we’ll put on a new label so customers know we didn’t include anything unnecessary this time ;)”
The marketing team heard from the people and the people want simplicity and safety. They might not have changed the product at all, but the label sure is compelling to the customer who tells themselves a story about complex chemicals and their lack of utility. Right, wrong, or otherwise, it took some empathy to get here, and for that I respect the decision.