Empathy never used to be an important aspect of my life. When I was younger I was often cold and uncaring, but it wasn't until I moved out of my home state that I grew more empathetic. Now, I can see that not everyone had the same upbringing and have very different views of life. Sometimes those people need to be reminding that not everyone is the same and not everything is easy for them, other times I still need my privilege checked. We all need to be able to empathize with each other and to look through the eyes of another. Your beliefs and opinions may not always be right.
If we do not have empathy, we cannot see how others will use our software. We may have a preconcieved notion of how the end user will look or how they will use the product, but this does not mean they are the only user. One may think the user wants a specific feature or may use the feature in a particular way, but unti