Comparative Self-Perception Empathy Study in the Design Process

Empathy, defined by Waal（2008）as the ability to understand a person from their frame of reference rather than one's own, has become relevant in the design exercise. The main objective of this paper is to report a preliminary study that looks into the correlation between designers' self-perception of empathy through self-assessments and the application of empathy on their projects through the analysis of their portfolios. Although there have been studies on the measurement of empathy in the field of psychology by Hodges & Myers (op. cit.), there is little literature on measuring how designers use empathy during the design exercise. The measurement instrument created and used in this paper may help designers and researchers understand the use of empathy in the design exercise. Two methods have been adopted in this study. The first is a quantitative approach was taken implementing Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004), a validated empathy test questionnaire, which has been used widely in clinical psychology. This study uses this test because it offers a holistic view of the empathy dimensions (emotional, cognitive, and associative). The second method is a questionnaire as an instrument created by researchers of this study to evaluate the level of empathetic thinking of the designer on their projects and observe the relationship between self-perception and their empathetic thoughts in the design exercise. This study analyzed an assertive perception of how empathetic designers clinically talk and their behavior in the design exercise. It involved correlational analyses between their clinical score as the independent variable, their self-perception score as the dependent variable, and the influence of two independent variables, clinical score and different background factors like professional field and working years. In the analysis of their clinical and self-perception scores, we obtained the result R= 0.867. It is observed that these two variables have a significant correlation at the 0.01 level. The data suggests a significant and strong relationship between clinical measures and self-perception scores. Using the spline chart analysis to compare clinical scores and profession fields, the result revealed that the top three scores are interaction design, graphic design, and industrial design, and art and CA/animation are the lower ones. In terms of demographics, we found that years of experience and the type of professional background influence empathetic thinking and the results from assessments, with a positive correlation in interaction design and animation and a negative correlation in industrial and graphic design. Moreover, artistic fields often show lower empathy scores than what, potentially reflecting differing demands for empathy in varying design disciplines. The comparison with the field of designers(industrial, graphic, interaction, etc.) and empathy clinical score shows that the most artistic disciplines participants show less empathy score, which may indicate that it doesn’t require the same level of empathy for every discipline in their daily design exercise. This study implies that background factors, such as profession and experience, may significantly impact empathy use in design.