Empathy Toolkits

What started as a little handmade exercise to bring Engineers closer to customers turned into a company-wide required training (+ a much, much larger handmade exercise…) 

The inception of the Empathy Toolkit was just that: to build and foster customer empathy. As the sole UX Researcher at PillPack, I noticed an empathy gap with some teams who didn’t have contact with customers. Our customers were mostly older adults juggling multiple medications. Our team? Brilliant, fast-moving, startup-minded… and largely in their 20s, with limited firsthand experience managing complex prescriptions.

So, the UX Design lead and I developed an exercise that brought our customers’ challenges to life. Each Empathy Toolkit came with a weekly pill sorter, a pair of gloves to mimic reduced dexterity, prescription glasses to simulate impaired vision, and several mock medication bottles with just-vague-enough instructions to cause frustration. The mission? “Sort your meds for the week.” Simple in theory, not so much in practice.

It worked. Teams laughed, struggled, asked questions—and most importantly, walked away with a much deeper understanding of the people we were building for.

Want to see how it all came together?

Check out this CNBC feature