Designing With Empathy

Candy Carmel–Gilfilen · Margaret Portillo

53 citations0/0 files storedHERD Health Environments Research & Design Journal

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Healthcare Facilities Design and Sustainability Design Education and Practice Empathy and Medical Education

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Designers can and should play a critical role in shaping a holistic healthcare experience by creating empathetic design solutions that foster a culture of care for patients, families, and staff. Using narrative inquiry as a design tool, this case study shares strategies for promoting empathy. BACKGROUND: Designing for patient-centered care infuses empathy into the creative process. Narrative inquiry offers a methodology to think about and create empathetic design that enhances awareness, responsiveness, and accountability. METHODS: This article shares discoveries from a studio on empathetic design within an outpatient cancer care center. The studio engaged students in narrative techniques throughout the design process by incorporating aural, visual, and written storytelling. Benchmarking, observations, and interviews were merged with data drawn from scholarly evidence-based design literature reviews. RESULTS: Using an empathy-focused design process not only motivated students to be more engaged in the project but facilitated the generation of fresh and original ideas. Design solutions were innovative and impactful in supporting the whole person. Similarities as well as differences defined empathetic cancer care across projects and embodied concepts of design empowerment, design for the whole person, and design for healing. CONCLUSIONS: By becoming more conscious of empathy, those who create healthcare environments can better connect holistically to the user to take an experiential approach to design. Explicitly developing a mind-set that raises empathy to the forefront of the design process offers a breakthrough in design thinking that bridges the gap between what might be defined as "good design" and patient-centered care.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Making stories: law, literature, life 2008A Review of the Research Literature on Evidence-Based Healthcare Design 2011Spark Innovation through Empathic Design 2004The Role of the Physical Environment in the Hospital of the 21 st Century: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity 1991Effects of interior design on wellness: theory and recent scientific research.2007Narrative Research in Nursing 1996Kitchen Table Wisdom : Stories That Heal 2005Improving Healthcare with Better Building Design

Cited by

2018A modified stakeholder participation assessment framework for design thinking in health innovation 2019Ways to harness the built environment of ambulatory cancer facilities for comprehensive patient support: A review of the literature 2024A Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Evidence-Based Design for Aligning Therapeutic and Sustainability Outcomes in Healthcare Facilities: A Systematic Literature Review 2018Cancer Treatment Facilities: Using Design Thinking to Examine Anxiety and the Patient Experience 2020Art Therapy with Interactive Viewing Will Bring Empathy Leading to Health and Care

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.