Special Episode: Empathy in Design is a dis­cus­sion on empathy concerning design and how empathy can lead us to favour the one over the many, privilege those we have emotional connections to, choose short-term gains at the expense of long-term solutions, and burn out and exhaust those continually engaged in empathetic activities.

This pod­cast episode explores the idea of empathy and how it differs from sympathy, pity, or compassion but an act of experiencing the world and growing awareness of what's going on. This brings up the “other person’s shoes” analogy, where we must understand a person's point of view or experiences to empathize with them and “come to experience the world as you think someone else does.”

Empathy in Design is essential because it allows individuals to predict the perceiver’s interpretation, indicating an identification of a located self concerning another. This allows us to understand the world through the eyes of another.

The Per­spec­tives Pod­cast was pro­duced on Treaty One ter­ri­to­ry, the orig­i­nal lands of the Anishi­naabeg, Nehiyawak, Oji-Cree, Dako­ta, and Dene peo­ples, and the home­land of the Métis nation.

We would like to thank the Fac­ul­ty of Architecture’s Stu­dent Inno­va­tion and Enrich­ment Fund, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba, Fac­ul­ty of Archi­tec­ture and UMFM 101.5 for the aid and sup­port for the pro­duc­tion of this series.

References

Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy. New York: Ecco.

——. (2017). Empathy and its discontents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 21:1.

Cuff, B., Brown, S., Taylor, L., Howat, D.J. (2016). Empathy: A review of the concept. Emotion Review. 8:2. 144-153.

Zingoni, M. (2019). Beyond Aesthetics, Empathy First. The Design Journal, 22:3. 351-370.