Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools

Sydney Pratte, Anthony Tang, and Lora Oehlberg. (2021). Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools. In TEI 2021: International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Acceptance: 29.9% - 30/134.

Abstract

Empathy tools are experiences designed to evoke empathic responses by placing the user in another’s lived and felt experience. The problem is that designers do not have a common vocabulary to describe empathy tool experiences; consequently, it is difficult to compare/contrast empathy tools or to think about their efficacy. To address this problem, we analyzed 26 publications on empathy tools to develop a descriptive framework for designers of empathy tools. Based on our analysis, we found that empathy tools can be described along three dimensions: (i) the amount of agency the tool allows, (ii) the type of sensation that are experienced, and (iii) the user’s perspective while using the tool. We show that this framework can be used to describe a wide variety of empathy tools, and provide recommendations for empathy tool designers, as well as techniques for measuring the efficacy of an empathy tool experience.

Materials

PDF File (http://hcitang.org/papers/2021-tei2021-pratte-empathy.pdf)
URL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBCzPt5ILxo)
DOI (https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3440644)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{pratte2021empathy,
  author = {Pratte, Sydney and Tang, Anthony and Oehlberg, Lora},
  booktitle = {TEI 2021: International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction},
  title = {Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools},
  type = {conference},
  year = {2021},
  acceptance = {29.9% - 30/134},
  pdfurl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2021-tei2021-pratte-empathy.pdf},
  url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBCzPt5ILxo},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3440644}
}