The Effects of Empathy Tool and Strategy on Novice Participants for Gaining The Empathy in Design Thinking Process.

• Main Authors: ON, GIA-HUE, 温嘉惠
• Other Authors: YANG, CHUN-MING
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6t2s39

碩士 === 明志科技大學 === 工業設計系碩士班 === 107 === Empathy is the key point underlying the popularity of design thinking. Various tools and strategies can be used to enhance one’s ability to see things from the point of view of others; however, there has been a lack of research into the challenges associated with the use of these tools in design thinking, particularly when novice participants are involved. Our primary objective in this three-stage study was to investigate the problems encountered by novice users of empathy tools and processes. For this, this study first examined three case studies with the aim of identifying difficulties in exercising empathy. This study then addressed these difficulties by formulating an empathy map pertaining to novice participants. A questionnaire was used to evaluate the empathy levels of participants before and after using the proposed map and design thinking process. The difficulties faced by novice participants were categorized as follows: empathy process (unready attitude, lack of experience, difficulties in extracting lessons) or empathy map (hard to use the empathy map). Based on these results, this study re-designed the empathy map and formulated new empathy strategies to overcome the initial difficulties experienced by novice participants. Specifically, this study (1) added a new video section to the empathy strategy to improve the attitude of participants and (2) we re-designed the empathy map to overcome the initial lack of clarity. Overall, the proposed scheme was found to improve both the cognitive empathy and the affective empathy of novice participants.