Building empathy: Opportunities for introducing future users' perspectives in architectural design
Valerie Van der Linden, Hua Dong, Ann Heylighen · Lirias · 2016
Empathising with future users is considered crucial in design but also challenging. Often designers have no direct access to the perspectives of those they are designing for. To involve future users’ diverse perspectives in the design process, different design disciplines have developed a gamut of techniques, which are largely unknown in architectural design. It is hypothesised that certain techniques have value for architecture as well, but need tailoring to architectural practice. The aim of this paper is to outline opportunities for introducing future users’ perspectives in architectural design. Preliminary results of an empirical study of architectural practice in Flanders (Belgium) indicate that architectural design is a specialist-oriented discipline, characterised by a particular subject, client relationship, firm size and project scale. Based on these characteristics and insights from an exploratory literature study on techniques used in other design disciplines, we identify opportunities in the areas of design briefing, framing, ideation and development. We suggest providing more engaging design briefs, mapping building visits, diversifying design scenarios, and using artefacts to enhance dialogue with clients and partners. This is expected to facilitate attention for diverse people’s spatial experience in architectural design.