Arts and Letters, School of

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    Empathizing Virtually -- Developing Future Forecasting Skills
    (Indiana University Southeast, 2022-09-03) Akhtar, Haseen; Janakarajan, Ramkumar
    Time-shift Alert: “Put yourself in the shoes of the user” to “Imagine yourself in the shoes of the user.” Empathy is the core of any design activity. It is said to be done by immersing oneself in the context of the user. It is best practiced by putting oneself in the shoes of the user, experience their circumstances, problems, barriers and then identify opportunities by gathering insights. Time has changed. We are experiencing the new normal which is a hybrid of less physical and more virtual. There is a need to swiftly transition to the virtual methods for carrying out design activity in this ever-demanding technology driven world. Before pandemic, empathy study can never be imagined to be done virtually. Although researchers have started doing empathy study virtually, but it lacks the essence. The insights which one can get from being in the context of the user is far more deeply and closely rooted to the problem than the insights gathered virtually which ultimately lacks the core user values. It is not possible to gather the exact same insights virtually than being physically present in the user’s context, but we need to get as close as possible by devising efficient virtual methods. The main question which is addressed in this study is: How design pedagogy can be changed to adapt to the present virtual era? How will be the new discourse of design activity in educational institutes? What are the different feasible methods in the premise of design teaching and learning? What could be the different methods to do empathy study in different context with different set of user groups? To answer the above intriguing questions, this study explores possible ways in which one can do empathy study in different context. Two methods were employed for the study. In the first method, early researchers, design students, academic professionals, and industry experts was asked to come up with new post-pandemic ways of doing empathy study in their own design problem which they are working for thesis. In the second method, we have used Futures Thinking technique developed by Jane McGonigal, a research director at the Institute of Futures, Palo Alto, California, USA. Ideas were brainstormed with focus 47 groups. Ideas from both the methods were analyzed on some defined parameters for its feasibility in the present scenario. Thus, a set of ideas were proposed for carrying out empathy study for different type of design problem for different type of user groups to be studied. It is therefore concluded that, Futures Thinking technique is an effective way to forecast future of design activities and design education in general. “Future is already here; it’s just not deeply imagined of.” - Author