Empathic design methods support designers in developing an empathic understanding of the people they design for. While researchers and designers use many of these methods, the literature falls short in providing an overview of these methods and what they contribute to the innovation process. We conducted two iterative workshops with 5 researchers in empathic design to define and map the properties of 10 selected empathic methods. By providing an overview, a mapping of empathic methods can support the deployment of empathic interventions. This mapping acts as a guiding tool to support designers in choosing the empathic methods that are the most relevant to their industrial context and audience needs. This work paves the way for further empirical research, inviting the design community to challenge these empathic properties and document how empathic design methods work in a variety of contexts for different audiences.@en

EmpathiCH aims to bring together and blend a diverse set of expertise to develop a new research agenda in the context of "Empathy-Centric Design".
Building on the discussions that emerged in the previous edition, the main research objective is to form a comprehensive and coherent framework that utilizes empathy as a new dimension of human-factors research and practice. We aim to consolidate the existing theoretical and conceptual constructs of empathy from diverse domains to reflect on its temporality, materiality, and the risks related to its instrumentalization.
With a mix of author panels, expert discussion, and interactive activities, we aim to make this workshop the ideal venue to foster collaboration, expand the community, and shape the future direction of "Empathy-Centric Design".@en

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other internal stakeholders shaping the service experience? In this contribution, we reflect on a three-year implementation of an empathy-centric design approach in an industrial context with a low user experience maturity from three different professional viewpoints: ours as UX researchers, the one of a company manager, and an expert researcher on empathy in design. These narrative introspective accounts unveil some of the main benefits, opportunities, and challenges of implementing an empathy-centric design approach in the industry. We discuss and confront them to prior work.We contribute to the field of empathic design with rich in-situ research insights and principles for a successful empathic approach.@en