Empathic Design In PSS

With the growing complexity of the design problem and the knowledge limitation，It isbecoming more and more difficult for design team to define demands of users. Whendesigning for the special groups, the great differences of physiology and psychology seem tobe a gap between users and the design team. User Centered Design (UCD) method tries to putusers in the center in every phase of product development and make them contribute to design.However, due to the invisibility of the potential demands and the limitation of expression, it isnot easy for users to perceive or express their demands of new products or services. Thisdisorder becomes more obvious in the new product development process for future scenario.All of them make it difficult to obtain the creative understanding of the users with thetraditional research methods. To overcome this difficulty, design industry began to focus onthe underlying psychological level, and involve the psychological concept-empathy intodesign research to obtain the accurate recognition of user’s situation, behavior, feelings,attitudes and expectations. As a new branch of UCD, empathic design has raised a wide rangeof discussions since1990s. However, empathic design still lacks of systematic theories andmethod s so far.This thesis started from the literature research on empathy as a psychological concept,then study empathy in design, and the methods and tools of empathic design. Combining withthe related theories of Product Service System (PSS), the author deduced the necessity ofapplying empathic design in PSS, putting forward the strategy and research process empathicdesign research methods in PSS. After that, the author applied the empathic design researchmethods and theories in guiding the whole process of PSS design project of pregnancy,enriching the empathic design methodology in the implementation process and generatingnew tools to support research development.The main research conclusions are as follows: empathy in design research is a process ofemotion and experience transformation between different roles. Different roles will beinvolved into empathic process. The author defined the framework of empathic designresearch as a process of Situation Acquirement-Situation Clustering-SituationCommunication-Conceptual Design-Situation Performance-Design Iteration from theperspective of emotion and experience transformation between different roles:user-researcher-designer-stakeholder. In addition, the author tried to extend the horizon ofdesign tools in the process of empathic design research: Empathy research tools as stimulantfor expression; as interaction media of experience communication. From these twoperspectives, the author raised the design guidelines of empathic design research tools andcreated the scenario cards as an important tool for empathic communication.