Using Focus Groups to Support the Designer in the Evaluation of Existing Products: A Case Study

McDonagh, Deana; Denton, Howard G.

doi:10.2752/146069299790303570

Cited by 24 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Every individual has his or her own unique experiences and these define his or her empathic horizon. The term 'empathic horizon' (McDonagh-Philp and Denton 1999) is used to indicate the limits on a designer's individual ability to empathise beyond certain characteristics of his or her group, such as nationality, background, age, gender, culture, experience and education. Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004) have developed a measure of someone's level of empathy, called the 'empathy quotient' (EQ, which is different from other 'emotional intelligent quotient').…”

Section: Ability and Willingness As Required Qualities Of Designersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life

Kouprie

Visser

2009

Journal of Engineering Design

447

346

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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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Section: Ability and Willingness As Required Qualities Of Designersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life

Kouprie

Visser

2009

Journal of Engineering Design

447

346

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Casselss et al (2010) find that cultural differences influence on individuals' empathic responding. In design, McDonagh-Philp and Denton (1999) suggest that everyone has a horizon of empathy, which defines 'the individual's range of understanding of user experiences in different contexts' (21). Many factors constitute this horizon, such as cultural background, educational level, social environment, empathic motivation, and perspective taking.…”

Section: The Influence Of Cultural Differences On Empathic Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding customers across national cultures: the influence of national cultural differences on designers’ empathic accuracy

Surma-aho

Chang-Arana

et al. 2021

Journal of Engineering Design

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For engineering design to be successful, it is essential to understand customer experience and identify customer needs. However, it is challenging to understand customers, especially those from different national cultures. The empathy literature suggests that having similar experiences to another person can help understand them better. This study adopts an empathy measure from psychology for use in a project where designers attempt to understand customers' driving experiences in different countries and identify their needs for detecting road hazards. We quantify designers' empathic accuracy and the correctness of their rating of customers' emotional tone. The results show that national cultural differences significantly affect the accuracy of designers' empathic understanding but do not impact their understanding of customers' emotional tone.

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“…Ważne jest jednak wyodrębnienie pojęcia tak zwanego horyzontu empatycznego (ang. empathic horizon), to jest badawczej umiejętności empatyzowania poza własnymi kontekstami -narodowością, wiekiem, płcią, kulturą, doświadczeniem czy edukacją 39 .…”

Section: Dyskusja I Wnioskiunclassified

W skórze drugiego człowieka — empatyzacja na poziomie sensorycznym stoso- wana jako narzędzie projektowe

Hydzik¹

2021

dzm

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Service Design, driven by egalitarian and inclusive values, explores research methods intended to adapt the users’ sensory system. Such tools, based on the natural human ability to empathize, are e.g. the GERT simulation suit and sight-impairing blindfolds. This paper summarizes several different studies devoted to this topic, discussing antagonistic views on the usage of such methods as a source of primary insights.

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Using Focus Groups to Support the Designer in the Evaluation of Existing Products: A Case Study

Cited by 24 publications

References 4 publications

A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life

A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life

Understanding customers across national cultures: the influence of national cultural differences on designers’ empathic accuracy

W skórze drugiego człowieka — empatyzacja na poziomie sensorycznym stoso- wana jako narzędzie projektowe

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