role of design, unless it can effectively combine affective with cognitive empathy, to deliver creative and research balance. The post conference argument here is that this is not just about design going for the money, but about creating a truly holistic and explicit understanding of human experience and relationships in the context of community change or innovation. I also proposed that specific professional design capabilities are needed to achieve this. Design capabilities to support empathy
In keeping with Sennett[10] and Heller[5], my experience is that effective communication is a key capability for empathic co-creation and collaboration. Communication creates relationships between machines or between people, and relationships form the entire web of our lives. Wherever you look – in business, science or society – it’s all about relationships. Therefore, what we really need to design is communication itself, and communication is about language. This infers that designing language and conversations is the most efficient way to impact social issues and change behaviour. Heller believes that’s what is emerging as the prevalent issue and has the biggest opportunities. Sennett maintains that presumption and assumption have no place in empathic co-operation (co-design thinking) and vocabulary. Co-designing creates opportunity at the point where a shared vision for a new future can be defined and envisioned by the community. The potential of design to have an influence on the future before any decisions get made – before any planning or prototyping is done – is really exciting, because we are designing opportunity at the point where a shared vision for a new future can be defined and envisioned. Looking more deeply into the design of communication to promote facilitation of human relationships – what competences are needed by designers to work in the community context? Jim Platts[8] advocates higher levels of thought in professional competence. He argues that certain skills underlie the higher level processes and that these are developed in particular ways. What is essential, is guidance in reflective practice from someone who already has the skills and is able to impart them to others. It takes time and involves empathy and trust. The skills include: — — — —
Empathic listening (personal observation) Unfreezing frozen emotions (group observation) Transcendent thinking (personal creativity) Achieving insightful consensus (group creativity)
Platt maintains that the higher processes involve reflection, develop alpha-rhythm processes in the brain, which synthesise information holistically. These processes 15