empathic design
papers, textbooks, casestudies on the areatwo kinds of papers
1 says in order to design stuff properly, websites, public installations you need to have some empathy with the people for whom your designing it. In order to do that you need to find out something about the people your designing for. That might mean interviewing them, observing, use of their public space, getting to understand how they live in that space, do they run by fast or sit around. What does it feel like to be in that place.
That's one type of paper: how do you find out about those people so that you can
do design that is empathic to their needs.
2 This is more related to our project.
You need to design something that illicts or get empathy from people for your product/project.
You want to design something that people will respond to positively like in a fundraising way so they will feel for the child soldiers. They will get some information about them, they will understand what their life is like and you will get some kind of as ye said pro - social behaviour with respect to them, it might be petition, fundraising etc.
Experience centered design framework
How do you go about designing something like that. we can read it and he will email us the original paper if we are interested.
Text book case studies
Text book: interaction design Jenny Preece
HCI or interaction design. Working out ways of designing and evaluating. Chapter in it that has a bunch of design ideas. Their case studies attached to that. 2 of these case studies are design projects, using the technology of experience framework that Pete and I developed.
Incidentally one of them is about fundraising for poor people in Boston. It uses the word empathy once or twice, but what is really talks about is an emotional response from people so that they help. it goes through the user experience framework, some design concepts, scenarios. Its a fundraising website. Kind talking about his life and your drawn into it immediately, his story. You could have all the statistics in the world that you like but you wouldn't shake anyone. You put on a couple of stories and it make a huge difference. A video with a face as they tell a story and it gets more of a reaction. If you put that together with information then you start to get empathy. If you just do the emotional heartstrings thing its just like advertising its manipulating people to do something. People get fed up of that very quickly. This is designed as an ongoing giving site. As well as giving the emotional side of it you give the information you give practical stuff about what people can do.
Keep it up to date with stories of projects that were developed using the money.
Empathy is not just emotional its knowing what its like to be that other person, trying to feel what its like to be that person and then knowing that your action has had an effect.
That's what the case study did. * he gave us a print out of two case studies including the one above
Empathetic framework and 3 key factorsIn terms of empathy in the framework that Pete and I did, when people are interacting with anything there are 3 or 4 key things which dominate, 1 is your emotional response, sadness doesn't often get people going actually has to be sad and i must feel like i can do something about it. 2 sensual side, touch, hear, taste, smell. very important if you can get stuff like that it would be great. 3 cognitive or thinking side, compositional you need to be able to put the whole thing in a story. compose a whole experience around it. and that works at different levels, you need to be able to put the specific event into a story so child soldiers, most people don't know anything about child soldiers, but you also need to put what your meant to do in this interaction, like give money.
4 Temporal thing if people feel that its a once off thing that they give money and that's the end of it, if they feel there is an ongoing story here they might give more.
imagine ye were designing something to really get people engaged with this and doing something about it over a period of time. imagine money is a useful thing I've no idea if it is or not in those situations. it might be from talking to Angela some of the people are kidnapped as kids so there is not much that money would do about it. But in a general way giving money might help bring the standard of living up so that their parents and the families aren't in the situation where they are so easily kidnapped or whatever or might pay for the volunteers like Angela.
* Angela Veale is also in the Psychology department of UCC and a co worker of Johns who has done work and research on child soldiers.
Think about the emotional, sensual, story and the story of the person interacting, temporal ie the time span of all of this. you have covered most of the basis for empathic design.
ideascant just be one kids story, where do ye get the stories from? you tube?
documentary, reintegration back in their homes, former child soldiers, what emotion did they experience? excitement, terror
get some sense of that terror in the story. so if you got a couple of their stories but also i think you need to get something in there about what some organization can do about it. people are not going to give money unless they feel somebody can do something about it. with the whole problem of child soldiers, it would be very easy to just go "oh god isn't the world an awful place" and what can you do. where as if you also give people information on what can be done that will draw them in and make that real as well eg goal concern, raise money specifically for a charity that would make all the right connections.
People would know more about child soldiers, the problems and issues around it, they would know more about what their intervention would do, they could imagine it making the kids lives a little bit better.
I think most people who will encounter your installation/project wont even know what child soldiers are.
Its a hard problem to sell, these kids are kidnapped and abused and brutalized and they are out shooting people, how do you raise money for kids that are out shooting. They become pretty brutalized and awful themselves after a while so how do you make that empathetic? What would your typical child soldier be?
they don't question anything, told what to do, don't have a choice, parents are wrong, they are superior, indoctrinated.
What age are they?
From 6 up
That would shock most people.
Male or female?
Both
really.
Its an awful situation but its one where allot of people will know nothing about. So even if you got no money and you got some useful information out there and got people to understand the problem that would be a very useful thing to do.
broadly speaking something like the story of child soldiers, story of how organizations can make that better cause i think that will be the next thing once people hear about it, they want to know what can we do about that ? you must do both of these in a way that's not just pulling at the emotional heartstrings but that's straight, honest, informative, factual, that's enough almost.
Questions we askednarrative and imagined other, which is more effective in this situation or both?it doesn't have to be one or the other, narrative is part of most things, you have to tell them the story, the story is very important here. if you are going to give them the experience as well then it has to be authentic. What you need to do with the imagined other in this case is very hard to do, how do you get people or even adults to feel what its like to be a child soldier in Africa. animation would be a good option. Virtual reality technology, VR situation where it has to be frightening to be real. Have to feel your immersed in their situation. that's not very mobile though. you could just do a bit of imagined other, so what bit would you do if you could? they don't have a choice they were robbed of their childhood. How do you get that across as an experience or imagined other? face talking to you, it could be ethically dangerous. we suggested doing this in a game. that's interesting, game has strange connotations though most games are fun, some are social conscious games. Graphic novels, theres a brilliant one on being in Palestine when the place is being bombed and they quality of the graphics absolutely brilliant and you do get a strong sense of what it is like to be in that situation. There is an animated film "waltzes with bashir" and its about being an Israeli soldier in Palestine. There are also ones by a guy called mausse about being a Jew in concentration camps. These are all done in comic/graphic novels and they are brilliant. One of the reasons they are so good is the drawing is amazing and its better than text. if its not better than another method then its not worth doing.
does empathy affect people of different demographics differently?the evidence on that is very mixed. Women are supposed to be more empathic than men. empathy isn't something your born with it develops as you go along. once you reach adolescence its fairly settled it doesn't change much after that except through events, something might happen that makes you more empathic. Kids can be empathic they learn fairly quickly, they identify with hurt/pain. They don't make all the connections but they can feel the pain of another creature. Its not as well developed its like an immediate emotional response.
Target audience?If its about fundraising then your target audience would be the people with the funds. If its more general then like being educational, informative and a bit of fundraising then i think as broad as possible. I guess you have to be careful not to do things that would frighten kids.
Charities use empathy to make people feel guilty and donate, is there other emotions that empathy would provoke? Is guilt an effective means?I think that's an awful way to it, if you just pull the heart stings that's what you get. Guilt is not a sustainable way of getting involvement or engagement or money. That has to come from a place which is both emotionally engaging and informative. example of adoption programme as a way of sustaining peoples interest for years. Its not about guilt its about wanting to make a difference. The guilt method gets lots of money quickly and then it stops and starts again. If you could get people involved in other real peoples lives that would be much more engaging and sustainable over long periods of time. it might be that ye set up a mechanism where people get in touch with other people and organise something.
Would the location, where we situate the project, public or private would that effect the audiences ability to be empathetic?Not in terms of the psychology of empathy. It would take at least 10 minutes to know enough and want to do something about the situation. So where would that be possible? you could do 2 things, a public installation which draws peoples attention to it and give them a URL or leaflet or something that they can look at after. So you can go home and look at it properly. Publicity immediate engagement to the project. Would weather effect it? How many people can see it at a time? Are people busy? That is all about the practicalities of it, empathy can work either way as long as they have enough time to view it.
If we were joining with an existing charity who have a brand identity would it effect peoples empathy because of pre-conceptions of the brand?It could, it might want to be something you would play up or play down. That goes beyond empathy into some positive and negative areas. interesting research on people trusting or not trusting information they see. One thing that increases trust is if their is a recognised big organization behind it. Trust is also something that develops so if they have interacted with that organization before and if it was negative or positive that will carry over into your project.
would feeling pressure of donating effect peoples feeling of empathy negatively?It is a very good point i think people might feel that we are being used so if you over do the emotional thing and then you ask to give money they think I'm being manipulated here, if you put it all together in a package with information, project. If a charity in Ireland is doing a project on child soldiers then id hook on to that and make it an added extra. Have the info as the main part and then say by the way if you want to support it here's what you can do. if the main thing at your installation is a box to put money into then they are going to read everything else through it. Id start with awareness and education and then move on to how to help.
Charities often use shock advertising and its an emerging trend do you think that method induces empathy?I think shock advertising works for some things but it wont work for empathy. there is an immediate emotional response like guilt or empathy which is a long lasting thing. Shock isn't going to get the long lasting effect. If ye want awareness, education and ongoing involvement in this well then you have the project for the year and then pass it on to an organization that's involved with it. Ye are doing something for that organization that they could use, its ongoing that will also appeal to people that are involving themselves. if you felt empathetic with someone it wouldn't be something that would switch on and switch off.
