Measuring Designers’ Empathic Understanding of Users by a Quick Empathic Accuracy (QEA)

Li, Jie; Surma-aho, Antti; Hölttä‐Otto, Katja

doi:10.1115/detc2021-69407

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…In another study (Chang-Arana, Surma-aho et al, 2020), designers' empathic accuracy was higher when inferring users' mental contents that were design-related in contrast to nondesign-related ones in three different design cases. A later study by Li et al (2021) replicated design relatedness results. In contrast to self-rating questionnaires, empathic accuracy provides a real-time measurement of mutual understanding between two people in a specific context.…”

Section: Limitaɵons and Designer-user Empathymentioning

confidence: 65%

“…State factors have been discussed in design 16/29 literature as well (McDonagh et al 2018). For example, and Li, Surma-aho & Hölttä-Otto (2021) found that national culture impacts the accuracy of user understanding. We note that state influences can be more or less static.…”

Section: Limitaɵons and Designer-user Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We note that state influences can be more or less static. For example, one cannot change the cultural background in which one is born but visiting or living in another culture can help gain certain insight into it (Li et al 2021).…”

Section: Limitaɵons and Designer-user Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Under the umbrella: components of empathy in psychology and design

et al. 2022

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Empathy is argued to be a key factor for a successful design discussion. However, such causality cannot be empirically proven based on how empathy is currently defined in design community. Empathy is used as an umbrella construct, broad and encompassing of diverse phenomena, making it difficult to quantify. We suggest improving such a situation by introducing a definition of empathy based on psychology literature, which provides structure and guidance for studying the role of empathy in design. We first break empathy to components. Then, we review empathy as used in design. Finally, we synthetize the reviewed material. From this synthesis, we conclude that empathy in design shares several key components of empathy in psychology; particularly with state influences, top-down control process and emotional stimuli. These are present in design methods although they have not been studied using such terms. Incorporating psychological components of empathy into design can help conceptualising empathy from a different angle, thus opening interesting new avenues for future research. We hope that our treatment provides present and future designers with some useful guidance.

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Section: Limitaɵons and Designer-user Empathymentioning

confidence: 65%

Section: Limitaɵons and Designer-user Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Under the umbrella: components of empathy in psychology and design

et al. 2022

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“…Chang-Arana et al [11] observed using empathic accuracy that designers are more accurate in inferring design-related thoughts and feelings than nondesign-related one, and Li et al [24,25] found that accuracy is impacted by national cultural differences. Emotional tone accuracy, on the other hand, has been linked to improving the ability to identify important user needs [26]. Transactions of the ASME the mental processes related to empathy [27].…”

Section: Behavioral Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The designers watched the recorded user interview and paused at the time when the user came up with a mental content; and the designer then inferred the user's mental content and emotional tone. As an empathic assessment, we used the quick empathic accuracy (QEA) [26] measure. This measure shortens the original empathic accuracy measure [23] by randomly selecting ten mental contents.…”

Section: Empathic Accuracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Facial Expression Analysis as a Measure of User-Designer Empathy

Salmi

Hölttä‐Otto

2023

Journal of Mechanical Design

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In human-centered product design and development, understanding the users is essential. Empathizing with the user can help designers to gain deeper insights into the user experience and their needs. However, capturing real time empathy during user interaction and the degree to which empathy enhances user understanding remains unclear. To narrow this gap, this study aims to explore the use of facial expression recognition during a videotaped user interview as means to capture empathy. Mimicry and synchrony have been shown to be predictors of empathy in cognitive psychology. In this study, we adapt this method to 46 user-designer interviews. The results show that the user and designer show mimicry in their facial expressions, which indicates that affective empathy can be captured via facial recognition. However, we find that the user's facial expressions might not represent their actual emotional tone, which can mislead the designer. Further, we do not find a link between the observed mimicry of facial expressions and the understanding of mental contents, which hints that the affective and some cognitive parts of user empathy may not be directly connected. Further studies are needed to understand how facial expression analysis can further be used to study and advance empathic design.

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Inconstant Empathy—Interpersonal Factors That Influence the Incompleteness of User Understanding

Hölttä‐Otto

2022

Journal of Mechanical Design

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In design, empathy can help designers discover and fulfill users' latent needs, which can potentially lead to better design solutions. To achieve deep user understanding, designers utilize their ability to empathize with users. However, empathy is always incomplete and inconstant in user understanding. This study applies a quantitative behavioral empathy measure to a case of designers attempting to understand the needs of users of a future semi-autonomous vehicle technology. In total, 16 designers and 48 users are involved. We study how interpersonal differences between designers and users and different users' mental content impact the level of empathic understanding. The results show that cultural difference, travel to the user's home country, and gender difference significantly affect designers' understanding of users' mental content but do not considerably influence their ability to infer users' emotional feelings. These influences vary depending on contextual factors that are related to the participants' own experience and the experiment itself.

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Measuring Designers’ Empathic Understanding of Users by a Quick Empathic Accuracy (QEA)

Cited by 6 publications

References 55 publications

Under the umbrella: components of empathy in psychology and design

Under the umbrella: components of empathy in psychology and design

Automatic Facial Expression Analysis as a Measure of User-Designer Empathy

Inconstant Empathy—Interpersonal Factors That Influence the Incompleteness of User Understanding

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