poster

Open access

Empathy in Design Scale: Development and Initial Insights

Authors:

Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy,

Vincent Koenig,

Carine LallemandAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts

Article No.: 373, Pages 1 - 7

https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519848

Published: 28 April 2022 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

Empathy towards users is crucial to the design of user-centered technologies and services. Previous research focused on defining empathy and its role in the design process for triggering empathy for end-users. However, there is a lack of empathy measurement instruments in design. Most previous work focused on designers, overlooking the need for other stakeholders to develop empathy towards the users to break organizational silos and deliver high-quality user-centered services and products. In this contribution, we share the preliminary stages of the development of an empathy scale for service design. We build on empathy literature from psychology and design to define 18 items representing four empathy dimensions. We report on the definition of these dimensions and their underlying items, and present preliminary studies in which we reviewed the first version of the scale with experts and stakeholders.

References

[1]

Simon Baron-Cohen. 2004. The essential difference: male and female brains and the truth about autism. Basic Books, New York.

[2]

Howard Becker. 1931. Some forms of sympathy: a phenomenological analysis. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. 26, 1 (1931), 58–68.

[3]

Francis Buttle. 1996. SERVQUAL: review, critique, research agenda. Eur. J. Mark. 30, (January 1996), 8–32.

[4]

Miguel Castillo-Díaz and José-Luis Padilla. 2013. How Cognitive Interviewing can Provide Validity Evidence of the Response Processes to Scale Items. Soc. Indic. Res. 114, 3 (2013), 963–975.

[5]

Álvaro M. Chang-Arana, Matias Piispanen, Tommi Himberg, Antti Surma-aho, Jussi Alho, Mikko Sams, and Katja Hölttä-Otto. 2020. Empathic accuracy in design: Exploring design outcomes through empathic performance and physiology. Des. Sci. 6, (2020), e16.

[6]

Benjamin M.P. Cuff, Sarah J. Brown, Laura Taylor, and Douglas J. Howat. 2016. Empathy: A Review of the Concept. Emot. Rev. 8, 2 (April 2016), 144–153.

[7]

Jonathan Dalton and Trent Kahute. 2016. Why Empathy and Customer Closeness is Crucial for Design Thinking. Des. Manag. Rev. 27, 2 (June 2016), 20–27.

[8]

Mark H. Davis. 1980. A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy. JSAS Cat. Sel. Doc. Psychol. 10 (1980), 85.

[9]

Alice Devecchi and Luca Guerrini. 2017. Empathy and Design. A new perspective. Des. J. 20, sup1 (July 2017), S4357–S4364.

[10]

Robert F. DeVellis. 2003. Scale Development: Theory and Applications. SAGE.

[11]

Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, and Shu Yuan. 2018. Empathy in Design: A Historical and Cross-Disciplinary Perspective. In Advances in Neuroergonomics and Cognitive Engineering (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 295–304.

[12]

Jennifer Edson Escalas and Barbara B. Stern. 2003. Sympathy and Empathy: Emotional Responses to Advertising Dramas. J. Consum. Res. 29, 4 (2003), 566–578.

[13]

Joanne M Hemmerdinger, Samuel DR Stoddart, and Richard J Lilford. 2007. A systematic review of tests of empathy in medicine. BMC Med. Educ. 7, 1 (December 2007), 24.

[14]

Justin L. Hess and Nicholas D. Fila. 2016. The manifestation of empathy within design: findings from a service-learning course. CoDesign 12, 1–2 (April 2016), 93–111.

[15]

Sara D. Hodges and Robert Biswas-Diener. 2007. Balancing the empathy expense account: strategies for regulating empathic response. In Empathy in Mental Illness, Tom F. D. Farrow and Peter W. R. Woodruff (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 389–407.

[16]

Robert Hogan. 1969. Development of an empathy scale. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 33, 3 (1969), 307–316.

[17]

Todd B. Kashdan, David J. Disabato, Fallon R. Goodman, and Patrick E. McKnight. 2020. The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised (5DCR): Briefer subscales while separating overt and covert social curiosity. Personal. Individ. Differ. 157, (April 2020), 109836.

[18]

Todd B. Kashdan, Melissa C. Stiksma, David J. Disabato, Patrick E. McKnight, John Bekier, Joel Kaji, and Rachel Lazarus. 2018. The five-dimensional curiosity scale: Capturing the bandwidth of curiosity and identifying four unique subgroups of curious people. J. Res. Personal. 73, (April 2018), 130–149.

[19]

Westley Knight. 2019. Building Empathy. UX Dev. (2019), 83–101.

[20]

Ilpo Koskinen, Tuuli Mattelmäki, and Katja Battarbee. 2003. Empathic Design - User Experience in Product Design.

[21]

Merlijn Kouprie and Froukje Sleeswijk Visser. 2009. A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life. J. Eng. Des. 20, 5 (October 2009), 437–448.

[22]

Ivar Krumpal. 2013. Determinants of social desirability bias in sensitive surveys: a literature review. Qual. Quant. 47, 4 (June 2013), 2025–2047.

[23]

Carine Lallemand, Jessie Lauret, and Luce Drouet. 2022. Physical Journey Maps: Staging Users’ Experiences to Increase Stakeholders’ Empathy towards Users. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–8.

Digital Library

[24]

Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport. 1997. Spark innovation through empathic Design. In Harvard Business Review. WORLD SCIENTIFIC, 102–113.

[25]

Jie Li, Antti Surma-aho, and Katja Hölttä-Otto. 2021. Measuring Designers’ Empathic Understanding of Users by a Quick Empathic Accuracy (QEA). American Society of Mechanical Engineers Digital Collection.

[26]

Cynthia A. Lietz, Karen E. Gerdes, Fei Sun, Jennifer Mullins Geiger, M. Alex Wagaman, and Elizabeth A. Segal. 2011. The Empathy Assessment Index (EAI): A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of a Multidimensional Model of Empathy. J. Soc. Soc. Work Res. 2, 2 (January 2011), 104–124.

[27]

Ariel Liu, Victoria Schwanda Sosik, and Khadine Singh. 2018. Building Empathy: Scaling User Research for Organizational Impact. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–7.

Digital Library

[28]

Helmut Lukesch. 2005. FEPAA - Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Empathie, Prosozialität, Aggressionsbereitschaft und aggressivem Verhalten. Hogrefe Verlag. Retrieved January 9, 2022 from https://www.testzentrale.de/shop/fragebogen-zur-erfassung-von-empathie-prosozialitaet-aggressionsbereitschaft-und-aggressivem-verhalten.html

[29]

Heidi L. Maibom. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy (1st ed.). Routledge, New York: Routledge, 2017. |.

[30]

Chris McGinley and Hua Dong. 2011. Designing with Information and Empathy: Delivering Human Information to Designers. Des. J. 14, 2 (June 2011), 187–206.

[31]

A Parsu Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry. 1988. SERVQUAL: A multiple- Item Scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. J. Retail. (January 1988).

[32]

Franz Petermann, Martin H. Schmidt, and Martina Suing. 2012. Kompetenzanalyseverfahren (KANN). Hogrefe Verlag. Retrieved January 9, 2022 from https://dorsch.hogrefe.com/stichwort/kompetenzanalyseverfahren-kann

[33]

Helma van Rijn, Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, Pieter Jan Stappers, and Aslı Deniz Özakar. 2011. Achieving empathy with users: the effects of different sources of information. CoDesign 7, 2 (June 2011), 65–77.

[34]

Carl Ransom Rogers. 1959. A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships: As Developed in the Client-centered Framework. McGraw-Hill.

[35]

Wina Smeenk, Janienke Sturm, and Berry Eggen. 2018. Empathic handover: how would you feel? Handing over dementia experiences and feelings in empathic co-design. CoDesign 14, 4 (October 2018), 259–274.

[36]

Wina Smeenk, Janienke Sturm, and Berry Eggen. 2019. A Comparison of Existing Frameworks Leading to an Empathic Formation Compass for Co-design. 13, 3 (2019), 16.

[37]

Wina Smeenk, Janienke Sturm, Jaques Terken, and Berry Eggen. 2019. A systematic validation of the Empathic Handover approach guided by five factors that foster empathy in design. CoDesign 15, 4 (October 2019), 308–328.

[38]

Paul E. Spector. 1992. Summated rating scale construction: an introduction (Nachdr. ed.). Sage, Newbury Park, Calif.

[39]

Christina Stadler, Wilhelm Janke, and Klaus Schmeck. 2004. IVE - Inventar zur Erfassung von Impulsivität, Risikoverhalten und Empathie bei 9- bis 14-jährigen Kindern –. Hogrefe Verlag. Retrieved January 9, 2022 from https://www.testzentrale.de/shop/inventar-zur-erfassung-von-impulsivitaet-risikoverhalten-und-empathie-bei-9-bis-14-jaehrigen-kindern.html

[40]

Edith Stein. 1917. Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Waisenhaus, Halle a.S.

[41]

Antti Surma-aho and Katja Hölttä-Otto. 2022. Conceptualization and operationalization of empathy in design research. Des. Stud. 78, (January 2022), 101075.

[42]

Arnold P.O.S. Vermeeren, Effie Lai-Chong Law, Virpi Roto, Marianna Obrist, Jettie Hoonhout, and Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila. 2010. User experience evaluation methods: current state and development needs. Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries : NordiCHI '10.

Digital Library

[43]

Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and Merlijn Kouprie. 2008. Stimulating empathy in ideation workshops. In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008 (PDC ’08), Indiana University, USA, 174–177.

Digital Library

[44]

Peter Wright and John McCarthy. 2008. Empathy and experience in HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’08), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 637–646.

Digital Library

Cited By

Batool VMurnane E(2024)Weight Bias in Design: Unpacking Implicit Researcher Beliefs for Building EmpathyProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661799(40-45)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661790.3661799
Chen CLi WSong WYe YYao YLi T(2024)An Empathy-Based Sandbox Approach to Bridge the Privacy Gap among Attitudes, Goals, Knowledge, and BehaviorsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642363(1-28)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642363
Tu ELee S(2024)A Clustering-Based Approach for Detecting Low-Contrast Texts on Web Pages at the Granular Character Level2024 IEEE 48th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)10.1109/COMPSAC61105.2024.00369(2296-2301)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC61105.2024.00369
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Empathy in Design Scale: Development and Initial Insights
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
  2. Interaction design

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Using Empathy-Centric Design in Industry: Reflections from the UX Researcher, the Client, and the Method Expert
EmpathiCH '23: Proceedings of the 2nd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop

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 ...
Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools
TEI '21: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

Empathy tools are experiences designed to evoke empathetic responses by placing the user in another’s lived and felt experience. The problem is that designers do not have a common vocabulary to describe empathy tool experiences; consequently, it is ...
Empathy in Service Design: Prompting Employees' Empathy with Users through Love and Breakup Declarations
CHIWORK '24: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work

Effectively prompting empathy from service employees towards users is a challenging yet essential endeavor to support user-centric approaches plebiscited by service companies. In this study, we investigate to which extent emotional and engaging users’ ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI EA '22: Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2022

3066 pages

ISBN:9781450391566

DOI:10.1145/3491101

Editors:
Simone Barbosa
PUC-Rio, Brazil
,
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan, USA
,
Caroline Appert
Université Paris-Saclay, France
,
David A. Shamma
Toyota Research Institute, USA

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International 4.0 License.

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 April 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Poster
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

CHI '22

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 29 - May 5, 2022

LA, New Orleans, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

6
Total Citations
View Citations
1,675
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)626
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)93

Reflects downloads up to 04 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Batool VMurnane E(2024)Weight Bias in Design: Unpacking Implicit Researcher Beliefs for Building EmpathyProceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual10.1145/3661790.3661799(40-45)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661790.3661799
Chen CLi WSong WYe YYao YLi T(2024)An Empathy-Based Sandbox Approach to Bridge the Privacy Gap among Attitudes, Goals, Knowledge, and BehaviorsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642363(1-28)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642363
Tu ELee S(2024)A Clustering-Based Approach for Detecting Low-Contrast Texts on Web Pages at the Granular Character Level2024 IEEE 48th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)10.1109/COMPSAC61105.2024.00369(2296-2301)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC61105.2024.00369
Drouet LMeijer WO'Kane ASingh AWambsganss TMauri AVerma H(2023)The EmpathiCH Workshop: Unraveling Empathy-Centric DesignExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3573796(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3573796
Zhang QBarbareschi GHuang YLi JPai YWard JKunze K(2022)Seeing our Blind Spots: Smart Glasses-based Simulation to Increase Design Students’ Awareness of Visual ImpairmentProceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526113.3545687(1-14)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545687
Lallemand CLauret JDrouet L(2022)Physical Journey Maps: Staging Users’ Experiences to Increase Stakeholders’ Empathy towards UsersExtended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491101.3519630(1-7)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491101.3519630

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents