Emotion, Empathy, and Sense of Connection: The Application of Letter Writing in Interior Design Studio

This paper explores the application of letter writing as a reflective practice in interior design education. As a method for generating data and triggering a narrative, letter writing captures and demonstrates the author’s identity, empathy, and emotionality. In a senior design studio focusing on adaptive reuse, students were asked to write letters to the site, a historic church that partially burnt in the 1980s, left vacant, and under threat of demolition. The intent of assigning letter writing was to capture interior design students’ emotions and ways of knowing, activate empathy, and cultivate their sense of connection to the historic place. Forty-five students participated in the study, each writing two letters—one after the site visit at the beginning of the design process, and the other after completing the design work. These letters detailed students’ site visit experiences, their understanding of the building’s history, observations of design elements, design strategies, challenges, and accomplishments. Using constructivist grounded theory, the analysis of these letters revealed the students’ emotional journey throughout the design process: sensing and triggering emotions, uncovering and expressing emotions, transforming emotions into design thoughts, and finally, building a sense of connection. This research enhances our understanding of interior design students’ emotional characteristics and highlights the benefits of letter writing in fostering empathy and designers’ connection with history, place, and local communities. It reveals the potential of letter writing to uncover the “covered” emotions in interior design education and practice, enriching the field’s “unique and non-supplemental identity” and contributing to its legitimacy and recognition.