The Dangers of Empathy: Toward More Responsible Design Research

Sketchnotes by MJ Broadbent for my Advancing Research 2023 talk. View the talk at https://youtu.be/JRtzhAPCu3o. View more of MJ's work at https://about.me/mjbroadbent.

Empathy is widely held as an important research mindset among designers. Many design research processes begin with the word. While empathy is broadly necessary to design practice, it is not without its problems. Most designers and researchers do not also know the dangers of empathy.

This talk explores the 'edges of empathy' and shows how and why two additional emotive capacities should be cultivated: curiosity and care. Three short case studies demonstrate that when these two capacities are added to empathy, they can lead to more generative research and richer insights.

Transcript