Using Empathy-Centric Design in Industry: Reflections from the UX Researcher, the Client, and the Method Expert

in EMPATHICH '23: Proceedings of the 2nd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop (2023, May)

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other ... [more ▼]

Empathic design provides tools and frameworks supporting designers to understand users’ experiences with products or services. However, how does one hand over this empathic understanding of users to other internal stakeholders shaping the service experience? In this contribution, we reflect on a three-year implementation of an empathy-centric design approach in an industrial context with a low user experience maturity from three different professional viewpoints: ours as UX researchers, the one of a company manager, and an expert researcher on empathy in design. These narrative introspective accounts unveil some of the main benefits, opportunities, and challenges of implementing an empathy-centric design approach in the industry. We discuss and confront them to prior work. We contribute to the field of empathic design with rich in-situ research insights and principles for a successful empathic approach. [less ▲]

The Digital Archive and the Politics of Digitisation

Presentation (2023, April 28)

This paper will explore a key question for historians today: what are the politics of cultural heritage digitisation and its implications for historical research? What are the benefits and opportunities ... [more ▼]

This paper will explore a key question for historians today: what are the politics of cultural heritage digitisation and its implications for historical research? What are the benefits and opportunities afforded by digitisation and what challenges arise? How do digital resources shape the historical themes, topics, and debates that can be researched, and how might they influence research agendas more broadly? In what ways can they enable us to ask new research questions or open avenues of inquiry that challenge existing master narratives? Can digital resources facilitate research into transnational histories when most digitization projects are still nationally framed? In short, what biases might digital archives introduce in our work and how does that differ from issues of bias and selection in the ‘paper’ archive? To address questions such as these, I will discuss several key parameters of the politics of digitisation set within a broader historical and global context. [less ▲]

“The Effectiveness of Right to Family Reunification” (Afrin, C-1/23 PPU)

Article for general public (2023)

Understanding our Universe thanks to mathematics

Presentation (2023, April 28)

Invoking Denial of Benefits Clauses in Wartime: Lessons from the Ukrainian Crisis

Scientific Conference (2023, April 27)

Pourquoi les femmes ont quitté l'informatique et pourquoi ce n’est pas une fatalité…

Presentation (2023, April 27)

Notre défi sera de mieux comprendre l'évolution historique qui, depuis les années 1950, a conduit à la désaffection progressive des femmes pour les études d'informatique. Cette tendance n'est pas sans ... [more ▼]

Notre défi sera de mieux comprendre l'évolution historique qui, depuis les années 1950, a conduit à la désaffection progressive des femmes pour les études d'informatique. Cette tendance n'est pas sans conséquence sur les usages, les pratiques, les produits et applications numériques. Elle est manifeste dans les représentations, les métiers, les programmes ou encore les algorithmes. Qu’est-il arrivé aux « Computer Girls » enthousiastes des origines ? [less ▲]

Three Essays on the General Equilibrium Effects of Human Interactions

Doctoral thesis (2023)

The overarching theme of this PhD thesis is human mobility and its externalities, particularly in the context of labour and health economics. Through rigorous modelling and analysis, the three chapters of ... [more ▼]

The overarching theme of this PhD thesis is human mobility and its externalities, particularly in the context of labour and health economics. Through rigorous modelling and analysis, the three chapters of the thesis demonstrate the potential benefits of policies that regulate human mobility. In the first chapter of my PhD, I examine how language training can improve the functioning of the labour market, with a particular focus on immigrants with high skills who face language barriers. I argue that fully funding the cost of language acquisition for migrants can bring significant benefits to the economy and migrants, but may marginally worsen the labour market performance of low-skilled natives. Using a search and matching framework with two-dimensional skill heterogeneity, I model the effects of a language acquisition subsidy on migrants' labour market integration and its impact on natives' labour market performance. My study finds that subsidizing language acquisition costs may increase the GDP of the German economy by approximately ten billion dollars by decreasing the aggregate unemployment rate and skill mismatch rate and increasing the share of job vacancies requiring high generic skills. The second chapter of my PhD explores the challenges involved in devising social contact limitation policies as a means of controlling infectious disease transmission. Using an economic-epidemiological model of COVID-19 transmission, I evaluate the effectiveness of different intervention strategies and their consequences on public health, social welfare and economic outcomes. The findings emphasize the importance of responsiveness in implementing social contact limitations, rather than solely focusing on their stringency, and suggest that early interventions lead to the lowest losses in economy and mental well-being for a given number of life losses. The study has broader implications for managing the societal impact of infectious diseases and highlights the need to continue refining our understanding of these trade-offs and developing adaptable models and policy tools to safeguard public health while minimizing social and economic consequences. Overall, the study offers a robust and versatile framework for understanding and navigating the challenges posed by public health crises and pandemics. The third chapter of my PhD builds on the economic-epidemiological model developed in Chapter 2 to analyze the multifaceted effects of vaccine hesitancy in controlling the spread of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium. The study utilizes actual vaccination rates by age group until June 2021 and simulates the following months by incorporating realistic properties such as temporary immunity, age-specific vaccination hesitancy rates, daily vaccination capacity, and vaccine efficacy rate. The baseline scenario with an overall 27.1$\%$ vaccine hesitancy rate indicates that current vaccination rates in Belgium are sufficient to control the spread of COVID-19 without imposing social contact limitations. However, hypothetical scenarios with higher disease transmission rates demonstrate the high costs of vaccine hesitancy, resulting in significant losses in labour supply, mental well-being, and life losses. Throughout this thesis, I have described the costs and benefits induced by mobility, and shown that mobility policies make winners and losers. In Chapter 1, subsidizing the cost of language acquisition for migrants can bring significant benefits to the economy and migrants, but may marginally worsen the labour market performance of low-skilled natives. In Chapter 2, stringent policies alleviate health losses, but they impact economic activity and mental health. In Chapter 3, the health externalities generated by human interactions impose a potential tradeoff between values, namely the freedom to move and the freedom to choose to get vaccinated. In each of these chapters, I quantify these tradeoffs. Another important insight from this thesis is the need to incorporate behavioural aspects into macro models evaluating the consequences of policies related to human mobility. In the thesis, these aspects include individual investments in language training, decision-making on infection avoidance, social contacts, labour supply, and vaccination decisions. can lead to more effective policies that balance the interests of various stakeholders. Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature on human mobility by highlighting the potential benefits and challenges associated with it, and the need for nuanced and responsive policymaking that takes into account behavioural aspects and externalities. The insights gained from this thesis can be relevant for future research in economics on topics related to human mobility, public health, and labour market integration. [less ▲]

Convergence of national prudential supervision under the European Single Supervisory Mechanism

Doctoral thesis (2023)

This dissertation starts with an overview of the recent and ongoing efforts to achieve greater convergence in national banking supervision within the European Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). However ... [more ▼]

This dissertation starts with an overview of the recent and ongoing efforts to achieve greater convergence in national banking supervision within the European Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). However, the persistence of distinct national preferences on banking supervision has resulted in ongoing differences in the practice of banking supervision at the national level. More specifically, the supervision of Less Significant Institutions (LSIs) has remained under the direct control of national supervisors and to, a certain extent, under national law, thus allowing significant ongoing margin of manoeuvre on supervision. This dissertation examines the consequences of this margin for manoeuvre left to national supervisors, despite strong convergence pressures through post-financial crisis EU institutional developments. The analysis focus upon the national supervision of LSIs. The main research question guiding this work is, therefore: under what conditions do pre-existing national institutional configurations continue to determine the trajectory of national supervisory practice in the context of European-level convergence pressures (through the European Banking Authority and the SSM)? To answer this question, I use a four-part analytical framework based on, first, Europeanisation which provides insight into top-down processes of integration, second, Historical Institutionalism which provides an understanding of path dependency from earlier policy decisions shaping national supervisory institutions and practice, third, the Epistemic Communities approach and fourth Transnational Policy Network framework. Based on this combined analytical framework, I formulate the following hypothesis: the more discretion exercised by the national supervisor in relation to its government, the more likely the adoption of policies and practices that result in greater convergence with the rules and practices developed at the EU / Banking Union level. To test this hypothesis, I start with a broad assessment of the provisions that provide margin of manoeuvre to national authorities, specifically the options and national discretions (ONDs) explicitly granted to national authorities — member state governments or supervisors — in EU capital requirements legislation: the CRD IV/V and CRR I/II. This assessment provides an initial confirmation of my hypothesis, showing a more important degree of convergence in the cases where national supervisors benefit from full discretion with no intervention from national governments. I then test the hypothesis on a typical case where NCAs can exercise discretion — the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) — and a typical case with national government intervention that limits supervisory discretion — Non Performing Loans (NPLs). Through an analysis of the French and German national cases with regard to SREP and NPLs, I conclude that the convergence of prudential supervision within the SSM was largely observed in cases where the national supervisor benefitted from discretion as a result of cooperation opportunities and socialisation processes. [less ▲]

Colonial Reverberations in Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Laws (mHRDD): Centering the West and Othering the Rest

Speeches/Talks (2023)

It is no exaggeration to observe that Europe is in the throes of a mHRDD wave. Regionally, the European Commission adopted a proposal on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in ... [more ▼]

It is no exaggeration to observe that Europe is in the throes of a mHRDD wave. Regionally, the European Commission adopted a proposal on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in February 2022. Nationally, countries such as France, Germany, and Norway, have recently enacted mHRDD laws geared towards reducing the governance gap that has allowed Transnational Corporations (TNCs) to (un)wittingly contribute to violations of human rights and the environment in primarily global south countries. These developments call for sober reflections on the intended and unintended impacts of mHRDD laws given their status as the “shiny new thing” in the global regulation of TNCs. Using a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens, this contribution adopts a counter-hegemonic vantage point to render visible what is currently invisibilized by the euphoria surrounding mHRDD laws. More specifically, I hypothesize that the processes surrounding the enactment and operationalization of these laws enacted, as they are, in the west, and certain substantive provisions within them; coupled with their extraterritorial impacts on global south states and peoples without adequately involving these states and peoples, replicate the dynamics of colonial power relations, reinforcing the power asymmetries that characterize the relationship between the west and the rest. Consequently, mHRDD laws should not be embraced with open arms, but rather, should be understood and critiqued within their proper, sometimes, neo-colonial context. [less ▲]

CritiX Space Safety and Security Lab: a path towards trustworthy space systems

Speeches/Talks (2023)

Space systems security is an emerging discipline in cyberphysical systems security domain. The research conducted in the field has to be done using realistic assumptions and pieces of equipment that take ... [more ▼]

Space systems security is an emerging discipline in cyberphysical systems security domain. The research conducted in the field has to be done using realistic assumptions and pieces of equipment that take into account multi-disciplinary character of space systems. In CritiX, we've built the Space Systems Safety and Security lab to facilitate the research on space systems and to support the education of future generation of space systems security specialists. [less ▲]