Triggering Service Employees' Empathy through Design Methods

Empathy is key in user-centered design. It drives designers to take users’ perspectives to understand their experiences. Moreover, empathy is vital for service companies as it ensures quality, fosters customer loyalty and forgiveness, and ultimately improves customer satisfaction. Empathy supports the service employees’ awareness of their role in users’ experience (even those without design background). At the organizational level, empathy is the ground for breaking silos between teams and increasing overall user experience maturity. However, the methods and processes for triggering service employees’ empathy are still under-researched. Design research needs more studies on empathic methods to train service employees’ empathy. The field also needs more research on measuring empathy in a design context to deepen knowledge of empathy mechanisms. This knowledge will help designers shape their empathic design approach and observe the empathy tendencies evolution of the other service employees after participating in empathic design interventions.
Our research investigates the use of empathic design methods to promote the understanding of customer experiences inside an organization and deliver high-quality experience services. How do empathic design methods influence service employees’ empathy towards users? We studied three empathic methods to trigger employees’ empathy inside the Luxembourgish railway service company (CFL): the physical journey map, the love and breakup method, and the co-creation method. In parallel, we developed and validated a self-reported measurement instrument, the Empathy in Design scale (EMPA-D), measuring three dimensions of service employees’ empathy: emotional interest and perspective-taking, personal experience, and self-awareness.
Researching methods triggering and measuring service employees’ empathy is primordial for supporting the design of services through user-centric approaches. This thesis brings reflections and guidelines to consolidate empathic methods and research on empathy in design.