Designing with Information and Empathy: Delivering Human Information to Designers
Chris McGinley, Hua Dong · The Design Journal · 2011
Current demographic trends such as increasing ethnic diversity and the ageing population indicate the importance for designers to appreciate and assess a wide variety of human capabilities, needs and wants.Work is being undertaken within the Inclusive Design Research Group to investigate how one might effectively communicate a wide range of people-based information, not only meeting designer's data requirements but also enhancing empathy with those being considered. A real-world case study is described to illustrate how rich user data in its many forms (that is, ‘human information’ as categorized by the authors) was captured and communicated to designers.This research is being carried out towards the development of an online resource which will help designers organize and interrogate issues relating to end users more effectively during the design process, and assist them in forming new connections and insights at the front end of concept creation.