Saw Myles Borins give a talk about Empathy on JSConf Iceland last week, one of the best talks of the conference and some really good points there. The talk is not available online (yet!) but I know it will be soon at https://2016.jsconf.is/ but I found this talk by him which seems to be based around the same concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTSvI8qw_M
Can't recommend it highly enough.