Teaching empathetic design through the pedagogy of discomfort

Students and novice designers, especially those just out of high school, have difficulties understanding the concept of empathy in the design process. In addition, they often confuse empathy with sympathy, and their design solutions show an element of condescension and stereotypical outcomes.

To address the above problem, we have employed two strategies; 1. Transformational teaching: to create a dynamic relationship between teachers, students and a shared body of knowledge to encourage learning and personal growth. This was achieved through situated learning with teachers acting as intellectual coaches who guide as and when required. And 2. Pedagogy of discomfort, According to Boler, pedagogy of discomfort as a teaching practice aims at disorienting learners through unsettling their taken-for-granted assumptions; and, consequently, engaging them in ‘collective witnessing’, ‘mutual exploration’ and ‘deliberate listening’. This was achieved by designing the learning context to engage students in an activity that is both surprising and requires them to un-anchor from their comfort zone.

This paper shares our experience using the strategies mentioned above to teach empathic design to novice designers. We discuss our findings around a case study, an interdisciplinary course comprising students from visual design, industrial design and nursing working together in a culturally diverse environment to solve a real-world problem based on ageing and dignity.