Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study
A growing body of research suggests that to uncover key needs and create successful designs, designers must holistically and empathically understand end-users. However, despite the existence of empathy frameworks and guides in design, little empirical work has investigated what influences and result...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128838 |
| _version_ | 1811098091998150656 |
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| author | Surma-aho, Antti Chen, Claudia Hölttä-Otto, Katja Yang, Maria |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Surma-aho, Antti Chen, Claudia Hölttä-Otto, Katja Yang, Maria |
| author_sort | Surma-aho, Antti |
| collection | MIT |
| description | A growing body of research suggests that to uncover key needs and create successful designs, designers must holistically and empathically understand end-users. However, despite the existence of empathy frameworks and guides in design, little empirical work has investigated what influences and results from empathy, i.e. its antecedents and outcomes, at the project level. Further, the distinct roles of affective and cognitive empathic processes are rarely recognized in design, even though they are commonly addressed in psychology research. To begin filling these research gaps, this paper presents a thematic analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews with product and service designers. The designers described a variety of techniques and situations that had enabled them to cognitively understand their users’ perspectives and that had caused affective reactions, ranging from consciously searching for analogous experiences in the designer’s own life to feeling concern for users after observing difficulties in their everyday lives. While cognitive empathy and the resulting accuracy of user understanding was perceived to motivate design changes and thus the creation of more beneficial designs, affective empathy was connected to increased acknowledgement of user problems and motivation to help users. The results describe empathy in a design context and highlight differences between distinct components of empathy. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:09:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/128838 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:09:46Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1288382022-09-30T00:08:53Z Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study Surma-aho, Antti Chen, Claudia Hölttä-Otto, Katja Yang, Maria Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering A growing body of research suggests that to uncover key needs and create successful designs, designers must holistically and empathically understand end-users. However, despite the existence of empathy frameworks and guides in design, little empirical work has investigated what influences and results from empathy, i.e. its antecedents and outcomes, at the project level. Further, the distinct roles of affective and cognitive empathic processes are rarely recognized in design, even though they are commonly addressed in psychology research. To begin filling these research gaps, this paper presents a thematic analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews with product and service designers. The designers described a variety of techniques and situations that had enabled them to cognitively understand their users’ perspectives and that had caused affective reactions, ranging from consciously searching for analogous experiences in the designer’s own life to feeling concern for users after observing difficulties in their everyday lives. While cognitive empathy and the resulting accuracy of user understanding was perceived to motivate design changes and thus the creation of more beneficial designs, affective empathy was connected to increased acknowledgement of user problems and motivation to help users. The results describe empathy in a design context and highlight differences between distinct components of empathy. 2020-12-15T22:17:51Z 2020-12-15T22:17:51Z 2019-11 2019-08 2020-08-13T16:51:22Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 9780791859278 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128838 Surma-aho, Antti et al. "Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study." Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference, August 2019, Anaheim, California, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, November 2019 © 2019 ASME en http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/detc2019-97483 Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) ASME |
| spellingShingle | Surma-aho, Antti Chen, Claudia Hölttä-Otto, Katja Yang, Maria Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title | Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title_full | Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title_fullStr | Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title_short | Antecedents and Outcomes of Designer Empathy: A Retrospective Interview Study |
| title_sort | antecedents and outcomes of designer empathy a retrospective interview study |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128838 |
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