Empathic Design: Cases Study of Designers Creating Empathic Phenomenons and The Dimensions of Empathic Design

Abstract

Ickes (1997) has mentioned that empathy is a complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others. The phenomenon of empathy has been discussed in philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology for many years. In the beginning of the 20th century, an extensive discussion on this phenomenon has been led by European intuition phenomenologists such as Husserl, Sartre, Brunswik, and Heider, etc. It is known that the theory of its development relates to understanding human feelings and emotions. Empathic design in the design field has developed emotional design, inclusion design and universal design, etc. Empathic design is an emerging issue in the design field. What are empathic design, designing process, design methodologies, and a strategic design model? Why is empathic design important to the creative and designing processes? Empathic design is one of the useful ways to understand interpersonal relationships that might influence the creative and designing processes, design strategies and innovation. Empathic design that emphasizes listening to the voice from customer's heart and designing this into design has been proved to be something the customer really needs in brand communication messages and brand values. This paper researches, investigates and gathers the research methodologies and combines a literature review, case study, structured interviews, and grounded theory. The structured interviews comprise four designers who worked in the brand design department, including two senior designers and two junior designers. Thus, a literature review is conducted in this research to discuss the empathic design model, explore founding theories and then seek to analyze and propose a structured empathic design model. Finally, the research presents an empathic design model to explain several denominations, which are empathic communication, empathic aesthetics, empathic innovation, empathic methodologies, empathic culture and others. The design creation process from abstract ideas to concrete manifestation for reference of design students, design teaching, and design practice.