Walking in the Shoes of Students: a Design-Based Reflective Analysis

In this paper, we report on an interactive design process that was conducted in parallel with teaching reflection to obtain insight into how we engage our students in the concept of empathy and user-centered design. College-level design students often struggle to conceptualize and understand the needs of an end user for their products. To understand how better to help them, we reflected on student projects and assessment tools, then we carried out a design assignment to develop a map of how we ourselves engaged in the process of eliciting and implementing end user requirements. Our analysis suggested that reflection on emerging product design expertise might help students understand how they can frame questions to obtain end user responses, and how they can use that information to keep the end user in mind as they move forward with their design process.