Challenges to teaching empathy in design

Abstract

This paper will discuss some of the challenges of teaching students to build empathy and learning how to utilize it within a design project. It will discuss challenges encountered within two college level classes: an industrial design studio and in a class on human factors and ergonomics. Two project examples will be presented for the studio, a universal design project and a project to design an assistive device. An example of an empathy activity used in the lecture based human factors class is presented.