Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings
© 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). All rights reserved. The success of design needfinding is largely dependent on how well designers understand their users. It is further claimed that user understanding and designers' capacity to adopt users' perspective, i.e. designer...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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ASME International
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139758 |
| _version_ | 1826217363262930944 |
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| author | Chang-Arana, Álvaro M Surma-aho, Antti Li, Jie Yang, Maria C Hölttä-Otto, Katja |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Chang-Arana, Álvaro M Surma-aho, Antti Li, Jie Yang, Maria C Hölttä-Otto, Katja |
| author_sort | Chang-Arana, Álvaro M |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). All rights reserved. The success of design needfinding is largely dependent on how well designers understand their users. It is further claimed that user understanding and designers' capacity to adopt users' perspective, i.e. designers' ability to understand others, are key skills that should lead to successful design outcomes. The general ability to understand someone else's mental contents, such as what they else think, feel, wish, and believe, is called theory of mind. In this study, we connect concepts of humancentered design and theory of mind through empathic accuracy, a performance-based method for measuring empathy. We state two hypotheses. First, that designers are equally accurate at inferring thoughts as they are at inferring feelings. Second, that designers are more accurate in inferring design-related mental contents than those that are not related to design. We answer these hypotheses by analyzing results of altogether 24 designers watching recorded needfinding interviews of 6 users and inferring their mental contents. We observed that feelings were more accurately inferred than thoughts, although the data showed some inconsistencies. A stronger case can be made for designers' accuracy of design-related entries, where designers were consistently more accurate at inferring design-related entries than non-design-related ones. These results provide concrete insight into how designers understand users and how empathy could be quantified in the design context. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:02:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/139758 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:02:48Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | ASME International |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1397582023-01-17T20:21:57Z Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings Chang-Arana, Álvaro M Surma-aho, Antti Li, Jie Yang, Maria C Hölttä-Otto, Katja Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering © 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). All rights reserved. The success of design needfinding is largely dependent on how well designers understand their users. It is further claimed that user understanding and designers' capacity to adopt users' perspective, i.e. designers' ability to understand others, are key skills that should lead to successful design outcomes. The general ability to understand someone else's mental contents, such as what they else think, feel, wish, and believe, is called theory of mind. In this study, we connect concepts of humancentered design and theory of mind through empathic accuracy, a performance-based method for measuring empathy. We state two hypotheses. First, that designers are equally accurate at inferring thoughts as they are at inferring feelings. Second, that designers are more accurate in inferring design-related mental contents than those that are not related to design. We answer these hypotheses by analyzing results of altogether 24 designers watching recorded needfinding interviews of 6 users and inferring their mental contents. We observed that feelings were more accurately inferred than thoughts, although the data showed some inconsistencies. A stronger case can be made for designers' accuracy of design-related entries, where designers were consistently more accurate at inferring design-related entries than non-design-related ones. These results provide concrete insight into how designers understand users and how empathy could be quantified in the design context. 2022-01-26T19:42:41Z 2022-01-26T19:42:41Z 2020 2022-01-26T19:40:01Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139758 Chang-Arana, Álvaro M, Surma-aho, Antti, Li, Jie, Yang, Maria C and Hölttä-Otto, Katja. 2020. "Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings." Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference, 8. en 10.1115/DETC2020-22245 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 ASME International ASME |
| spellingShingle | Chang-Arana, Álvaro M Surma-aho, Antti Li, Jie Yang, Maria C Hölttä-Otto, Katja Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title | Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title_full | Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title_fullStr | Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title_short | Reading the User’s Mind: Designers Show High Accuracy in Inferring Design-Related Thoughts and Feelings |
| title_sort | reading the user s mind designers show high accuracy in inferring design related thoughts and feelings |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139758 |
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