Design For Empathy - Products for Conflict Resolution

Submitted by admin on Fri, 11/18/2011 - 5:18pm

Themes

Cities, neighborhoods, cultural activities

URL:

http://www.designagainstcrime.com

Promoters:

Design Against Crime Research Centre - University of the Arts, London

Presentation:

This project was carried out by MA Industrial Design Students at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of The Arts London. The Brief was developed by the Design Against Crime Research Centre to explore how empathic design and design research methods can be used to resolve conflict situations. The brief required the designers to identify conflicts between users and then to use empathic methods and dramatic techniques pioneered by Augusto Boal to understand the experiences of each user within the conflict scenario. The designers were then required to address the conflict by developing objects systems or environments that create empathy between the conflicting parties so that they can understand each other’s position and in the process resolve the conflict.

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.

Project :

During the first phase, students were asked to identify an area of conflict in everyday life. These situations became the focus for a research phase and the creation of role-play scenarios could be used to generate empathy.

During the second phase, students were required to design objects, interventions or services which addressed the situations they had identified.

Examples of conflict situations tackled include: cab drives and cyclists who can’t see eye to eye, the vegetarians vs meat eaters, recyclers v throwaway consumers, those that queue v. those who don’t, old v young users of public transport or public space, property owners v graffiti artists, noisy v sensitive neighbours, parents v children.

Design role:

Outcomes from individual projects ranged from computer games (Police vs. population under surveillance) to book design (Parents and Children unwilling to take medicine), to packaging (Vegetarians Vs. meat eaters) to products (sufferers vs. non sufferers of vertigo). These have been documented on the website: http://maidempathy.jimdo.com/design-work-1/

Each was tested as far as circumstances would allow.

The project is currently entering its next stage, where further students will use the refined design tools to engage in a second empathetic design exercise.

Ben Hughes

Lorraine Gamman

Adam Thorpe

Matt Malpass

Design Against Crime Research Centre

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

University of the Arts London

Links:

http://maidempathy.jimdo.com/design-work-1/

http://www.designagainstcrime.com/