Manifestations of perspective taking in student design thinking projects

Design thinking is a user-centered toolkit and mindset for solving a wide variety of complex challenges in the modern world, and both scholars and practitioners vouch for the importance of empathy in the design thinking process. Furthermore, the cognitive component of empathy, perspective taking, has been established as a tool for practitioners of various human-centered fields, such as psychiatry and medicine, to understand their customers, i.e. users, and to engage in constructive helping behavior.

While the effects and benefits of empathy in design have recently received attention in literature, neither the empathic techniques nor the measurability and impact of empathy in design thinking are yet fully understood. This thesis addresses these gaps by exploring the quantity and quality of perspective taking in design thinking project teams throughout their process, as well as the correspondences between perspective taking, design exploration activities, and project success.

Perspective taking was measured in student design teams throughout a graduate-level design thinking course with two instruments: the Interpersonal Reactivity Index survey subscale for perspective taking (IRI:PT) answered by up to 171 students, and a thematic analysis of 20 recorded design review sessions. Exploration activities were measured by classifying the prototypes built by the student teams, while project success was assessed through the team-level grading performed by course staff.

The results show that the quantity of perspective taking changed during the observed design process, with the thematic analysis indicating little perspective taking during detail design when compared to divergent and system-level design. Overall, the IRI:PT responses suggest a slight growth in the perspective taking capabilities of students during the project course. Qualitatively, perspective taking was described through seven content categories: “Antecedents for perspective taking”, “Concept background”, “Use case walkthrough”, “User interaction methodology”, “General user information”, “Concept-related user information”, and “Impact of perspective taking”. It was found that the most successful novice design teams presented distinct types of perspective taking, including expressing immersive user testing methods, describing their users and the user experience of the design in length, producing relevant concept implications based on user interaction, as well as taking time to focus solely on technical implementation.

In summary, this thesis found that the amount and nature of perspective taking change throughout design thinking projects, and uncovered multiple potential connections between user perspective taking, design exploration, and project success. However, further research with more data is needed to produce reliable conclusions.