Honey, I’m Thirsty!

In a scene from the film White Men Can’t Jump, Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez are in bed together; she is studying for Jeopardy, and he is just lying around. She turns to him and says, “Honey, I’m thirsty,” so he gets up, walks to the kitchen sink, fills up a glass of water, comes back, lies down in bed, and hands her the glass of water. She takes the glass of water, looks at it, and tosses it in his face. He says, “What the hell, what did I do wrong?” and she says, “Honey, I said I was thirsty. I didn’t want a glass of water. I wanted empathy. I wanted you to say I know what it’s like to be thirsty.”

Brad Feld describes this beautiful, little scene and uses it to explain the essence of the differences between the two — where he went to solve her problem and all she wanted was some empathy.

To understand humans, their needs, and whether products meet those needs, you too need to develop empathy. Empathy is an intentional effort of understanding the thoughts of another person while uncovering their reasoning, as Indi Young defines it. It’s not just being able to feel what another person feels because you have already experienced a similar situation. When you develop empathy toward another person, a future customer, you want to learn from that person about his or her needs, behavior, and problems.

Tomer Sharon is the author of Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research. Get a 20% discount when you purchase the book directly at Rosenfeld Media using the code tomernews.

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