Context  :

Empathy is the ability to project oneself into another realm of experience from which to better understand it. Empathetic processes are very important to designers as they are often required to see things from another’s perspective be they users, consumers, individuals. Drama techniques are sometimes drawn upon by designers to generate scenarios that may improve empathetic design understanding.

Empathy is a crucial concept to the study of ‘emotional design’ as it involves an understanding, and often experiencing, of another’s emotional state. There have been many well-documented instances of designers attempting to put themselves into users’ shoes, to generate new concepts and to engage with users linked to participatory and experiential models of the design processes. The creation of simulated experience has been a design goal in itself, perhaps most typically in the area of inclusive design where ‘ageing suits’ are used to enable designers to experience the restricted of movement of an older user. However there are few examples of ‘design for empathy’ outside these niche applications, where the aim of the designed output - the product of design rather than the process of design – is to generate empathy amongst those that engage with the designed output. Specifically, there are few ‘designs’ that seek to resolve conflict amongst their users.

Context

Context
: With the development of the civic awareness, people concern more about their living environment. Currently more and more people begin to present their ideas through micro blog or social networking website. Citizens need more powerful application to give their voice about the city by the social media platform.

Project
: This projectfocuses on people’s care about their city, trying to find out what people concern most about the city and what kind of solution people really need. This project focuses on people’s feelings and insights about the urban environment. Combined with crowd-sourcing model, it tries to present the participatory sensing to help public share the information of city service on the mobile networking. The application will offer an efficient way to gather, analysis and show information, and simplify communication process between citizens,the authorities and social organizations. People can post and share problems, comment and vote for the solutions through the application. The idea of collective intelligence and crowd sourcing will be used as new way to promote the social participation and serve for the inclusive development of the city.

Context
UniSA DESIS Lab, Adelaide is working with the South Australia’s Premier and Cabinet Integrated Design Strategy (IDS) Team on a variety of design projects related to the city of Adelaide. UniSA DESIS Lab has taken a part in the overall research strategy that will be used to inform decisions on how the local communities use the buildings, places, spaces as well as landscapes and natural resources.

The Australian Government, through the Local Government Reform Fund, has chosen to support the IDS for inner Adelaide as a unique pilot with a view to it being a national model for designing, planning and building Australian communities in a more integrated way.