Including empathy in the design process adds value because it increases the liklihood that users will have a positive experience of the products. This sentence struck me in the Bresslergroup article, "We meet our users where they are." Meeting people where they're at strikes me as a critical component of good design. A great product is only great if it's connecting with a user's needs; to make that connection, a designer has to think carefully about who the user is, and where she's coming from.