Empathy Through Animal Centered Design
The Challenge
Building an inclusive workspace for corporate venturing.
The Outcome
An ACD exercise is used to discuss stereotypes, unconscious prejudice, and cultural diversity.
pH-auna was initially asked by Climate Focus to assist them in introducing their Bogotá-based staff to their venture team GANSO, which is headquartered in one of Colombia's cattle centres - Villavicencio. Despite the fact that the teams had been working together for some time, they had never met in person, with the Bogotá team focusing on policy, finance, and environmental science and the Villavicencio team made up of agronomists, veterinary technicians, and animal scientists.
The workshop's initial goal was to help integrate the teams through an interactive ACD exercise; however, after further discussion, we realized that the diverse backgrounds of the participants presented a clear opportunity to not only introduce the teams, but also to use the core values of ACD to promote empathy-related discussions.
To begin, participants were taken through a series of activities to develop a novel grazing experience for a specific cow, motivating them to create a persona that takes the cow's habitat, food preferences, personality, sensory features, cognitive skills, and social tendencies into account. The beauty of designing for another species is that, unless we can claim to know all there is to know about them and experience the world as they do, humans prefer to take the time to utilize curiosity to systematically break down the features connected to the specific animal. We avoid prejudice in this way because who can truly assess a cow from a human perspective?
The next exercise included splitting the participants into pairs and asking them to build an ideal day for a coworker. After learning the key concepts of ACD, we invited participants to consider their coworker not as the human they felt they knew so much about, but rather to adopt the same methodical approach they had used when their user was a cow. Participants learned many new and surprising facts about their coworkers and were able to ask more in-depth questions about variances in attitudes toward work, family structures, basic beliefs, and what hobbies they found rewarding.
Both objectives were met, according to participant feedback: a newly discovered appreciation for animals; as one participant stated, "Thanks to this workshop, I have broadened my perspective and allowed me to recognize the importance of our relationships with all living beings, treating them as individuals;" and an empathy-driven team integration. "It was intimidating at first to share with colleagues from such diverse backgrounds, but the workshop really helped us get to know one other and be interested about one another, allowing us to produce incredibly meaningful action items as a family of firms."
