Abstract
This study explores how personality traits of AI chatbots affect designers’ emotional experience, empathy, and the quality of outcomes during the empathy phase of the design thinking process. A between-subjects experimental design was conducted with 60 design students assigned to interact with chatbots exhibiting positive, neutral, or negative personality traits. Participants collaborated with the chatbot to complete an empathy mapping task, and their emotional and empathic states were measured before and after the interaction. The results demonstrated that AI chatbot personality traits significantly affected participants’ emotional responses, particularly with negative traits reducing positive affect. Empathy levels increased significantly in the positive and neutral conditions, with the positive trait showing the greatest effect. Furthermore, personality traits influenced the quality of the empathy maps: chatbots with a negative trait were associated with more stereotypical and less con textually accurate outputs. This study provides theoretical contributions to design education and human-AI interaction by demonstrating that AI personality traits actively shape the emotional and cognitive dimensions of design work. Practical implications suggest that AI systems with personality traits can enhance inclusive and human-centered design processes.
Keywords
Design thinking; Empathy; Chatbot; Human-AI interaction
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.227
Citation
Li, H.,and Ho, C.(2025) The Impact of AI Chatbot Personality Traits on the Empathize Phase of Design Thinking, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.227
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 4 - Human-Centered AI
The Impact of AI Chatbot Personality Traits on the Empathize Phase of Design Thinking
This study explores how personality traits of AI chatbots affect designers’ emotional experience, empathy, and the quality of outcomes during the empathy phase of the design thinking process. A between-subjects experimental design was conducted with 60 design students assigned to interact with chatbots exhibiting positive, neutral, or negative personality traits. Participants collaborated with the chatbot to complete an empathy mapping task, and their emotional and empathic states were measured before and after the interaction. The results demonstrated that AI chatbot personality traits significantly affected participants’ emotional responses, particularly with negative traits reducing positive affect. Empathy levels increased significantly in the positive and neutral conditions, with the positive trait showing the greatest effect. Furthermore, personality traits influenced the quality of the empathy maps: chatbots with a negative trait were associated with more stereotypical and less con textually accurate outputs. This study provides theoretical contributions to design education and human-AI interaction by demonstrating that AI personality traits actively shape the emotional and cognitive dimensions of design work. Practical implications suggest that AI systems with personality traits can enhance inclusive and human-centered design processes.