Role of Empathy

Assignment 2-

Empathy is the quality of experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experiences of others as embodying another person’s state of being. It means to try and find a solution of a problem by putting ourselves into the troubled person shoes. Until the problem doesn’t seep into us we can never really solve the problem. Like as a designer when I am creating a floor mat for kids, my first and the last design vary a lot because in the starting I am only thinking about it from a designer’s point of view. But when I observe the kids and try to understand them well, then the design improves and it becomes better than the first

But sometimes it may be about not embodying empathy. Its good if a designer embodies empathy and makes his designs accordingly but it’s not always possible because many a times the products are made to give an aesthetic appeal rather than for any productive use.

Earle Dickson invented band aid in 1920 for his wife Josephine Dickson, who frequently cut and burned herself while cooking.so it’s a nice example of embodies empathy.

Empathy involves awareness and understanding of others’ feelings as opposed to one’s own. But not all the time it’s same. Sometimes he might create something for himself which might or might not be useful for others or is aesthetically appealing but not useful at all which is like anti altruism.

Because when you do something for yourself or for someone we always get something back as a reward which can be anything but always self-satisfaction. So I think there is nothing as selfless exists. Because when we give away something that we don’t want, at first place it may not be selfish but may not be selfless either. When we walk on the road we see many beggars, and we feel sad so we do something for them. Donating something is selfless but we are getting self-satisfaction out of that so it’s again selfish only. At the end unconsciously everybody is selfish.

Every kind of designer is empathetic at the end. Empathy plays a very important role in everything. So it’s not only architect or graphic designer but any designer. Everyone solves their problem; find their ways by its own. So for every designer empathy plays an important role.