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DESIGNING THE EMPATHIC EXPERIENCE. Suggestions from Art Practices

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Alice devecchi
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10319.22_319.1-7000.319 22/11/23 12:34 Pagina 1

DESIGNING THE
The issue of empathy as an embodied, dialogic experience that potentially

10319.22
enhances the value of human relationships, constitutes the core of this book,
which is mainly addressed to explore whether empathy is designable and
how.
The emerging collaborative approaches to design call for a rethinking of
how empathy is usually accounted for in this discipline. Empathy is not only EMPATHIC EXPERIENCE

A. DEVECCHI DESIGNING THE EMPATHIC EXPERIENCE

a designer’s skill to step into the other’s shoes; it can be a dialogic experience
that supports the unfolding of meaningful relations, laying the groundwork Suggestions from Art Practices
for collaborative design processes.
This book traces a theoretical framework for changing perspective on em- Alice Devecchi
pathy in design, by integrating a phenomenological account focused on its
specific nature of intersubjective experience that introduces others into one’s
own personal horizon and enables the acknowledgement of otherness.
Empathy may unfold spontaneously within relational contexts, while still
requiring its facilitation and support. If empathy is un-designable, enabling
conditions for its emergence are. This study argues the case of a possible
role for the arts in suggesting strategies and providing models for design-
ing these enabling conditions.
Art practices – immersive, collaborative, and participatory – are analysed
with the aim of extracting principles useful for designing the empathic ex-
perience. Principles converge into guidelines, intended as meta-design tools
for collaborative processes.

Alice Devecchi is PhD in Design. She is a researcher and teacher in History

of Contemporary Art. Her research interests lie on the boarder of the two di-
sciplines and explore their mutual exchanges and interconnections. She wrote
Giocare in casa. Il senso dello spazio e del movimento (Il Verri, 2012). About
empathy and design she co-authored (with L. Guerrini) some influential pu-
blications, among which Empathy and design. A new perspective (2018) and
Empathy for resilience (2019), awarded with the Best Paper Award at Cumu-
lus Conference Rovaniemi 2019.

FrancoAngeli ISBN 978-88-351-2901-1

La passione per le conoscenze

(Edizione fuori commercio)

D.I. DESIGN INTERNATIONAL

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