My friend Delos “Toby” Cosgrove is a fellow blogger for LinkedIn. He and his wonderful organization, the Cleveland Clinic, deserve a massive shout-out for their recent video entitled “Empathy.” I challenge you to watch it without a few tears forming.

Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task. When communicated as it is in this video, empathy can be truly inspirational. What the Cleveland Clinic movie reveals is the true scale and complexity of the challenge of understanding a complex social situation in order to design a system that supports many and various needs.

Think of this movie as a design brief. How would you design a hospital or health care system that helps and supports each of the people and their circumstances that you see here? How would you change the space, the roles that staff play, the type and manner in which patients receive information, the support systems around patients and staff?

How do you go about being inspired by empathy?

(Posted also on my LinkedIn Thought Leader blog)