Empathy in Design: A Historical and Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

From a historical and cross-disciplined perspective, this paper reviewed the evolvement of empathy in philosophical aesthetics, sociology and psychotherapy. Three aspects of ambiguities about empathy were summarized, namely, affection and cognition, subject-oriented and object-oriented perspective, and attitude and ability, based on which a system of coordinates was created to indicate three pairs corresponding problems of empathy in design research and practice. Through this system of coordinates, the authors wanted to build a reference for designers and researchers to deeper understand the subtle nature of empathy in design.