Empathic Accuracy Empathizing with users is believed to result in better product development. However, no one has ever measured empathy. How well do we really understand the user? This is why empathic engineers – engineering, design, psychology, and neuroscience team members – took on this challenge. In 2019, they measured the empathic accuracy of designers. It turns out we understand only 30-50% of the users thoughts and feelings. If the empathic accuracy is calculated only
for the user’s product or design-related thoughts and feelings, the accuracy is improved to 45-65%. This is better, but to improve the situation, the team is now collecting physiological and brain data in order to develop an understanding of how interpersonal synchrony, i.e. being ‘in sync’ with another person, can help improve this understanding. (Funded by Teknologiateollisuuden 100-vuotissäätiö & Aatos & Jane Erkko Foundation.)
Learn more in: Chang Arana, A. Surma-aho, A. Li, J., Yang, M. & Hölttä-Otto, K. (2020). ‘Reading the user’s mind: designers show high accuracy in inferring design-related thoughts and feelings’. ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences, IDETC2020.
Research Wing - Experiments
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