What Does Empathy Really Mean in Testing?
“Empathy” a word we often come across in our day-to-day life. When we pronounce it, it sounds simple and short, but the weight it carries is quite deep. And if someone still doesn’t know what empathy is, it means putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and trying to understand the situation from their perspective.
Now, what does empathy mean in the context of testing? For me, it means that before running any test case, there’s one important question I always ask myself:
“What would I feel if I were the user here?”
This one question has helped me transform my entire approach to testing financial products. It shifts my testing perspective to a human navigating complex, and often emotional, financial journeys.
The Silent Currency: Emotions Behind Every Transaction
In FinTech, everything revolves around money. But what is often overlooked is the emotional weight attached to every dollar, rupee, or euro that flows through our systems.
One of the incidents that I will never forget was watching a mother of three trying to send money for her child’s school fees during a meeting. The transaction took just 15 seconds to process, but I watched her grip her phone tighter with each passing second. Those 15 seconds were not just time, they were moments filled with worry, hope, and responsibility.
Alt Text – There is trust when we deposit our salary… anxiety while waiting for a transaction to complete… urgency when making last-minute bill payments… fear when seeing unexpected charges… and relief when confirming a successful transfer.
These are not just emotions, they are the silent currency that flows alongside the actual money in every FinTech product.
One miscalculated offer calculation is not just a numerical error, it could mean someone’s dream of home or business slipping away. A failed transaction is not just a system timeout, it could mean a utility disconnection or missed opportunity.
Practical Empathy in FinTech Testing
Stepping Into Real Financial Journeys
Testing with empathy means understanding the full context of financial decisions. When testing such an application, I think about the anxiety of waiting for approval, confusion around complex terms, and potential disappointment of rejection.
This thought led me to suggest adding estimated processing times for applications after noticing users repeatedly checking their status, a behavior driven by anxiety, not software issues. This simple addition reduced both server load and user stress.
Moving From Test Cases to Life Cases
Standard test cases verify functionality. Empathetic test cases verify experiences.
When testing money transfers, I do not just confirm the money moves from A to B. I consider scenarios like:
- What if this is someone sending their first funding?
- What if they are unsure they have done it correctly?
- What if a recipient is waiting for urgent funds?
This approach once uncovered a blind spot in our testing, the confirmation message generated after successful transfer of money didn’t mention when funds would arrive. Even though technically it was okay, it was emotionally jarring for someone sending emergency money.
Where Empathy Makes the Biggest Difference
Onboarding: Where Trust Begins
Imagine yourself as someone who has never used a digital wallet, perhaps an elderly person trying to keep up with technology or someone from an underbanked community. Terms like “P2P transfers,” “liquidity,” or even “KYC” can create immediate barriers.
After watching people around me struggle with a financial app, I began conducting what I call “jargon audits” during testing. This led to creating progressive disclosure patterns for complex terms and implementing optional guided tours that significantly improved completion rates for first time users.
Delivering Difficult News with Dignity
There is a world of difference between “Your application has been rejected” and “While we could not approve your application request at this time, here is why, and here are some steps that might help you qualify in the future.”
By focusing on how rejection messages make users feel and what paths forward they offer, we created a more supportive experience. This resulted in an increase in users who reapplied successfully after an initial rejection, proving that empathetic design does not just feel better it performs better.
Managing the Anxiety of Waiting
Few things generate more anxiety in FinTech than the spinning wheel of an in-progress transaction. Is it working? Has my money disappeared? Should I try again?
Testing with empathy means ensuring proper feedback at every step. We implemented incremental success messages (“Payment authorized,” “Payment processing,” “Payment confirmed”) that reduced transaction abandonment and dramatically cut down on duplicate transactions from nervous users hitting “submit” multiple times.
How Empathy Transforms Test Design
Uncovering “Technically Correct but Emotionally Wrong” Issues
Some of the most important issues I have found were not technical failures but emotional disconnects, features that worked correctly but failed users emotionally:
- A savings goal feature that showed “0 percent complete” when users made their first deposit (technically accurate but motivationally deflating)
- Transaction histories that displayed technical codes instead of meaningful descriptions
- Success messages that confirmed actions but did not acknowledge their importance (“Card added successfully” versus “Your card is ready to use for purchases”)
Finding Edge Cases Through Empathetic Imagination
When we think empathetically, we naturally explore edge cases because we consider diverse life circumstances:
- What happens if someone tries to send money just in time, only to find out the funds arrive too late?
- How does the app behave when a user is traveling internationally and wants to do a transaction?
- What if someone is using the app during a natural calamity when connectivity is limited?
These scenarios rarely appear in requirement documents, but they represent real human needs in critical moments.
Building a Culture of Empathy in Testing
In the high stakes world of financial technology, where downtime is not expected and even a one second delay can trigger anxiety, empathy cannot be an afterthought. It must be woven into the testing approach.
“In Their Shoes” Testing Sessions
Our team regularly conducts immersive testing sessions where we adopt specific user personas and scenarios:
- Testing while using screen readers to understand visually impaired experiences
- Performing tasks with artificial constraints like time pressure or distractions
- Using devices with throttled connections to simulate rural or unstable networks
These sessions consistently uncover issues that regular testing misses and have become some of our most valuable quality practices.
Frustration Testing: Deliberately Creating Stress
I sometimes deliberately test under conditions designed to create frustration:
- Attempting transactions with nearly depleted phone batteries
- Testing while simulating distractions or interruptions
- Purposely entering incorrect information to evaluate error recovery
- Copy pasting values and submitting special characters which exposes security risks
This approach led us to implement blocking copy-pasting, right-click along with that also auto save functionality for long forms after discovering how devastating it was to lose carefully entered information due to session timeouts or connectivity issues.
Why This Matters More in FinTech Than Almost Anywhere Else
Real People, Real Impact
FinTech is not just about transactions, it is about transformation. It is the college student checking if their scholarship has arrived so they can buy textbooks. It is the family sending money to relatives facing hardship overseas. It is the small business owner waiting for approval of their application to make payroll.
During beta testing, I saw a user get confused and stressed because a display bug showed their account as overdrawn. That moment really hit home how even small bugs can cause big worries.
Edge Cases Are Real People Too
What might seem like technical edge cases often represent real human situations:
- Someone typing their name in a non Latin script is not an edge case, they are a user with a cultural identity
- Someone on a 2G connection is not an anomaly, they are a user in a rural area trying to access financial services
- Someone who needs enlarged text is not an accessibility checkbox, they are a person managing their finances despite visual impairments
By testing for these scenarios with empathy, we expand financial inclusion rather than accidentally creating digital barriers.
In Practice: From Testing Transactions to Testing Trust
Not every user will send a thank-you note, and that’s okay. But occasionally, we do hear back. One user wrote to thank our team after successfully sending money at the last minute for an urgent payment. “The whole time, I felt like your app understood how important this was to me,” he said.
He didn’t know about the testing we had done simulating such critical moments, ensuring clear communication during stress, providing the right reassurance, and keeping transactions moving even when systems are busy.
He had no idea we had tested with poor connections or built in special handling for urgent situations. He just knew that when it mattered most, the app worked without adding to his stress.
That’s what good empathetic testing looks like, users don’t notice all the work behind the scenes, they just feel confident that things will work when they need them to.
A Final Thought: The Human Behind Every Transaction
Empathy is not a feature we can toggle on or off. It is a fundamental mindset that transforms how we approach quality in FinTech. It is not about being perfect, it is about being thoughtful, responsive, and genuinely concerned with user well-being.
The next time someone is testing a financial product, pause and ask : “What would I feel if I were the user here?” That simple question has transformed my approach to testing, the products I have helped build, and ultimately, the financial experiences of countless users who will never know how much thought went into the moments that matter most to them.
Let us not just test for functionality. Let us test for people. Because behind every transaction is a human story, and our job is to ensure that story has a happy ending.
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