Week 2: Empathy and Moral Vision

Moving from the ¨way it is¨ to the ¨way it ought to be¨

Last week you started to identify problems in your community. This week you are going to choose the problem you would most like to work on and identify the gap between the current reality and the way things should be.

I. Introduction: Your aspiration or moral vision

In the last lesson, you learned about the ¨gap,¨ or the distance between the way things are and the way you aspire for them to be. In ethics we call this your moral vision, or the way things ¨ought to be.¨ Here is a quick review from last week:

Now that you have identified the current reality, or ¨the way it is,¨ in your community by listing the different problems that you observed around you, you are going to choose one of the problems and define your belief in the ¨way it ought to be.¨

II. Empathy and understanding viewpoints

In defining your aspiration or moral vision and creating a solution, it is important to consider the people with an interest or concern in the problem that you are trying to solve. These people that you are designing for are called your ¨stakeholders¨ or ¨users.¨ When you begin understand and share the feelings of these people that you are designing for, you are exercising empathy, a key component of the design process.

This week when you go out and make an effort to understand those that you will be designing for you will be in the Empathize Mode of the design process. Take a moment to read about this below:

From: https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf

Assignment:

For this weeks assignment, you will choose one of the many problems you brainstormed last week to work on for the rest of this class. Once you have chosen your problem, you will begin to explore your problem and define your vision after talking with people involved with the problem you are trying to solve.

To do this you will need to investigate and define the problem…

1. Using the list you brainstormed last week, define the problem you want to work on for this semester.
2. Now that you have your problem, go out into your community and talk with 3–5 people (stakeholders) about the issue and ask with them about why they think it is a problem and how they would like to see the problem addressed.

• One interview technique you could use is called The Five Whys

3. Once you have defined the problem and talked with your stakeholders you will need to define the current reality (¨the way it is¨) and describe your aspiration (¨the way it ought to be¨).

By Sunday, September 24 respond to this post with a two paragraph response*. Each paragraph can be short (around 5–7 sentences), but make them as detailed as possible.

Part I (Paragraph 1): In a few sentences describe the challenge you see in your community so that we can get a real understanding of the problem from your description.

Part 2. (Paragraph 2): In a few sentences describe your aspiration, what your community would look like if this problem was addressed. Consider what your community would look like, feel like, and sound like is the problem was addressed. Be sure to use what you learned in your interviews to help you write this section.

Part 3. List the 3–5 people you spoke to and their role (Example: Bill Cotter (teacher) or Bob Bandoni (business owner).

*To respond to the post, click the speech bubble below (to the left of the Twitter symbol) and leave a response.