Abstract
Designers are increasingly collaborating with various stakeholders to address complex societal challenges. These challenges often require a codesign approach, where differ-ent actors with diverse perspectives and experiences unite to explore innovative ave-nues for change. Such collaboration requires empathy between the actors to under-stand each other’s perspective better in their interactions. This paper aims to assist so-cial designers in orchestrating such empathic codesign processes by introducing an Em-pathic Journey framework. This conceptual and practical framework is based on em-pathic design theory and three design cases which used Virtual Reality for perspective exchange between actors. The framework addresses the importance of integrating an emotional spark through immersion and the necessity of embedding immersive experi-ences in a larger journey.
Keywords
empathy; societal challenges; emotional spark; virtual reality
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.340
Citation
Spek, D., Sleeswijk Visser, F., and Smeenk, W. (2024) It really touches me: How to design Empathic Journeys with Virtual Reality in societal challenges, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.340
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
It really touches me: How to design Empathic Journeys with Virtual Reality in societal challenges
Designers are increasingly collaborating with various stakeholders to address complex societal challenges. These challenges often require a codesign approach, where differ-ent actors with diverse perspectives and experiences unite to explore innovative ave-nues for change. Such collaboration requires empathy between the actors to under-stand each other’s perspective better in their interactions. This paper aims to assist so-cial designers in orchestrating such empathic codesign processes by introducing an Em-pathic Journey framework. This conceptual and practical framework is based on em-pathic design theory and three design cases which used Virtual Reality for perspective exchange between actors. The framework addresses the importance of integrating an emotional spark through immersion and the necessity of embedding immersive experi-ences in a larger journey.