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In user-centred design, a widespread recognition has surfaced for the importance of designers to gain empathy with the users for whom they are designing. Several techniques and tools have been developed to support an empathic design process and several issues are indicated that support an empathic process, but precise definitions and a framework of what makes 'empathy' is missing. Although the need for empathic approaches in design has been repeatedly stressed, a fundamental basis of the concept of empathy is missing. The goal of this paper is to inform the discussion in the design community by applying the concept of empathy as it has developed in psychology. This paper presents a review of how empathy has been discussed in design and psychology literature, and proposes a background framework for supporting empathic approaches in designing. The framework presents empathy in design as a process of four phases, and gives insight into what role the designer's own experience can play when having empathy with the user. This framework can be applied to three areas: research activities, communication activities and ideation activities. Empathic designConsider a multi-disciplinary design team consisting of marketers, engineers, product designers, usability professionals, etc. The team has received a brief to design a communication product for elderly people, but none of them belongs to the user group himself. How does the design team make appropriate design choices for others who are unlike themselves?The problem of understanding the user and his or her experience has a central place in usercentred design (Sanders and Dandavate 1999, Sleeswijk Visser et al. 2005. The design literature of the past two decades has explored several ways of bringing contextual and affective factors into design. By 'empathic design , designers attempt to get closer to the lives and experiences of (putative, potential or future) users, in order to

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