🐵 Day 2: Mirror Neurons and User Empathy
In the early 1990s, at the University of Parma in Italy, a team of neuroscientists was running a now-famous experiment with macaque monkeys.
They were studying the motor cortex — the part of the brain that activates when a monkey performs an action like reaching for a peanut.
During one session, something unexpected happened.
A monkey sat motionless, wired up to a neural monitor, while a researcher across the room casually picked up a peanut. The monkey hadn’t moved — but its brain lit up as if it had.
The same neurons that fired during movement were firing during observation.
These were later named mirror neurons — brain cells that respond not just when you do something, but when you see someone else do it. It was one of the first major scientific clues to how empathy might work on a neurological level.
And while the research is ongoing and complex, the core idea is compelling: we don’t just understand each other intellectually — we simulate each other physically. At the level of the brain, we mirror what we see.
If you’re a designer, you know this intuitively.
You’ve watched a user fumble through a poorly designed flow and winced. You’ve sat in a testing session and felt your heart race when someone got frustrated or lost. You don’t just analyse user behaviour — you inhabit it.
That’s empathy. Not as a personality trait, but as a sensory skill.
And in the context of startups, it’s a superpower.
Founders are often taught to focus on scale, TAM, and defensibility. Hell, I wrote a whole book about that subject myself. But in the beginning — when it’s just you, a problem, and a prototype — your ability to feel what other people are feeling is your sharpest tool.
It’s how you know what to build. What to strip away. Where the friction really is. It’s how you avoid shipping something that looks smart on paper but fails to connect.
Empathy gives you a front row seat to your users’ experience — often before they can articulate it themselves.
But here’s the tension: empathy doesn’t always come with authority.
I’ve worked with dozens of designers who knew where the product needed to go — but couldn’t get the room to listen. The CEO overruled them. The PM redirected them. The roadmap was already locked.
Meanwhile, engineers and product managers — people who may have joined after the vision was shaped — often went on to lead the company, raise capital, and profit from the growth.
That’s not because they were more capable. Often, it’s just because they saw themselves as potential founders. And designers didn’t.
That’s why I’m doing this series. Because I believe more designers should be leading companies — not just designing them.
Tomorrow: What a broken bone can teach us about career pivots — and why many design leaders only step into their next chapter after something snaps.
- Andy Budd
The Design Coach & The Design VC