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Empathic design is an approach to design where researchers or developers try to get closer to the lives and experiences of (putative, potential or future) end-users, and to apply what they learn together with end-users in the design process. The goal of empathic design is to ensure that the product or service designed meets end-users' needs and is usable.

Empathic design can be seen as a move of researchers and developers into the world of end-users, whereas participatory design can be seen as a move of end-users into the world of researchers and developers.

See also

• Contextual design
• Design philosophy
• Ethnography

External links

• Leonard, Dorothy and Jeffrey F. Rayport. Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. Boston: Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec 1997. Reprint #97606, page 107

• Designing in the Dark – empathic exercises to inspire design for our non-visual senses http://www.hhrc.rca.ac.uk/programmes/include/2005/proceedings/pdf/fultonsurijane.pdf

• Ilpo Koskinen, Katja Battarbee, and Tuuli Mattelmäki. (Professional) Empathic Design: User Experience in Product Design. (IT Press) 2003. ISBN 951-826-708-1

• UXmatters, a nonprofit Web magazine about designing and developing effective user experience (UX) strategies

http://www.uxmatters.com

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