Rethinking Design Thinking: Empathy Supporting Innovation

McDonagh, Deana; Thomas, Joyce

doi:10.4066/amj.2010.391

Cited by 56 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Our activities focused on taking the design educators and students outside their personal comfort zones and allowing them to be flexible in understanding cultural cues in the user context. 10 As future practitioners, these students are closer to gaining insights, awareness, and empathy for others as a vital skill. Added to this, students are less prone to assigning generalised stereotypes and negative connotations to those who are different from them.…”

Section: Empathic Educational Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Within the design field, empathic education is emerging as a strategic way of understanding users and user experience toward the design of innovative products. 10 While empathic educational strategies have been presented in the medical and design fields, these strategies differ considerably. This difference is largely the result of the two fields requiring empathic strategies for different purposes, yet it is clear that because both fields are practice--based and humanistically--oriented there is considerable potential for one to learn from the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Empathic education in design: Strategies for healthcare practitioners?

Thomas¹

2012

AMJ

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REVIEWPlease cite this paper as: Thomas J, McDonagh D, Strickfaden M. Empathic education in design: Strategies for healthcare practitioners? AMJ 2012, 5, 5, 292--300. http//dx. AbstractThe education of professionals, such as healthcare practitioners, involves an enculturation process that immerses individuals into the rites, rituals and values of the particular profession. Professionalisation, particularly in fields that have a long history, reinforces values that are inherent to the core skills and practices essential to the profession. Due to the complexity of enculturation, when a shortfall is discovered within the education of professionals, it can be challenging to shift the value system. This paper is a response to a growing body of research on how to develop stronger, more meaningful education on physician-patient relationships with a particular focus on developing the attribute of empathy. The aim of this paper is to present five strategies for empathic education in design that may be used by healthcare educators towards developing stronger physician--patient relationships. The presentation of these strategies is a response to numerous studies on medical education that illustrate a decline in student empathy during the training process. In addition, studies in medical education have illustrated that teaching empathy is best done through the arts. This paper presents five empathic education strategies in the form of case studies. The research strategies are qualitative by nature in order for one to understand the emotional, physical and intellectual needs and experiences of others. The results illustrate benefits, challenges and unexpected outcomes that may occur while teachers and students engage in empathic education. Key results include stories about how empathic education strategies can push people outside their comfort zones. This can develop into a respect for others that could not be learned through exposure to theory alone. Using empathic education strategies in learning environments provides rich input towards expanding the interpersonal skills and empathic horizons of individuals. Five strategies used in the design field are presented here in order to provoke and support healthcare professionals in the pursuit of creating a more humanistic--centered approach in the enculturation process.

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Section: Empathic Educational Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathic education in design: Strategies for healthcare practitioners?

Thomas¹

2012

AMJ

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“…Employing human-centred design and empathic research strategies (e.g. shared language, collaboration, ethnography, and empathy) 11,12,13 in both the classroom and research activities has ensured that functional and emotional needs of users (medical professionals and mainstream users)…”

Section: Case Study: Interdisciplinarity + Innovation + Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating Alongside Designers

McDonagh¹

2013

AMJ

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“…Third, empathy helps branch out into other skills and integrate them with their deep knowledge, as long as they experience the problem from multiple perspectives to fully understand the latent needs. By combining different insights it allows for creativity and higher innovation performance (Martin, 2009;McDonagh & Thomas, 2010).…”

Section: The Anthropologistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Team Structure on Innovation Performance: An Empirical Study

2013

CBR

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Teamwork is gaining increasing attention in a broader management research. In addition to previous research on the relationship between team structure and innovation performance, this study draws from an interesting experience-based theory advanced by Kelley and Littman (2005), which examines teams from design thinking perspective, and tests its contributions and effects on team's innovation performance. According to Kelley and Littman any team should include the following team roles: The anthropologist, the experimenter, the cross-pollinator, the hurdler, the collaborator, the director, the experience architect, the set designer, the storyteller, and the caregiver. We develop theoretical logics to explain how team structure that includes these key team roles and competences lead to a better innovation performance, and propose pertinent hypotheses.Experimental-empirical research and quantitative analysis were used in the study. The study conducted multiple experiments on three samples: a group of foreign entrepreneurship students, a group of technical students, and an additional group of randomly selected individuals, aged between 20 and 58, with diverse backgrounds. A special approach was implemented and a new instrument was developed to evaluate individuals in teams. While the results show that team that possess the major competences proposed by Kelley and Littman are more innovative, preliminary results also show that not all team roles are equally important. Moreover, team roles should be allocated equally among members for better collaboration, member satisfaction, and quick response, and within one team, one prevailing personality is optimal in terms of innovativeness. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and managerial practice.

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Rethinking Design Thinking: Empathy Supporting Innovation

Cited by 56 publications

References 8 publications

Empathic education in design: Strategies for healthcare practitioners?

Empathic education in design: Strategies for healthcare practitioners?

Innovating Alongside Designers

Effects of Team Structure on Innovation Performance: An Empirical Study

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