Empathic engineering

Helping deliver dignity through design

Journal article (2015)

Authors

Ian Hosking University of Cambridge
Katie Cornish University of Cambridge
M. D. Bradley University of Cambridge
P.J. Clarkson University of Cambridge
Affiliation
External organisation
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Published Date

03-10-2015

Language

English

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External organisation

Abstract

Dignity is a key value within healthcare. Technology is also recognized as being a fundamental part of healthcare delivery, but also a potential cause of dehumanization of the patient. Therefore, understanding how medical devices can be designed to help deliver dignity is important. This paper explores the role of empathy tools as a way of engendering empathy in engineers and designers to enable them to design for dignity. A framework is proposed that makes the link between empathy tools and outcomes of feelings of dignity. It represents a broad systems view that provides a structure for reviewing the evidence for the efficacy of empathy tools and also how dignity can be systematically understood for particular medical devices.