20
sustaInaBlE FashIon : a handBooK For Educators
If the designer is not able to be with the people that are
being empathised with, the user/consumers can provide
an ‘experience’ for the designers through these packages,
through the empathy probes. As teachers, how can we
deliver an empathetic experience?
We have the usual options:
- lecture
- exercise
- seminar/tutorial
- field trip
- individual project
I started off trying to think of ways for the students to
‘experience’ another person, or another life, within an
informal lecture. I decided to start with ‘baby steps’ and
opted for a very basic experience. Firstly, I suggested
that all the students take their shoes off, and put them
in pairs in a row. We stared at them and I didn’t actually
indicate why we were doing this. Then I suggested they
move maybe one or two pairs of shoes to the right. To
enter into the experience I usually take my own shoes
off. I then suggested they put someone else’s shoes on.
Aligning with the old adage of ‘walking a mile in another
man’s shoes’, you get to understand how they feel. Whilst
we are doing this I ask questions: ‘what part of you do
you use to design?’, ‘how does this affect you as a human
being?’, ‘how did you actually feel, what are your sensations?’
Furthermore, I quizzed them as to whether they could
feel the size of someone else’s foot, and the way the
other person had been walking in that shoe – adding that
perhaps they could try to empathise with who that other
person was.
Another method I have used, which is not unlike imagining
the back-story of a film, or the prequel (imagine The
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series), is to empathise
with an image. For this exercise you need to source a
photograph from a contentious environment - where a
newsworthy incident has happened. It is an exercise in
creative imagination, an area in which most students are
highly capable. A useful source is images available from
on-line news services – Al Jazeera http://english.aljazeera.
net/, Reuters http://www.reuters.com/, Associated Press
http://www.ap.org/, BBC World Service http://www.bbc.
co.uk/worldservice/, CNN http://www.cnn.com/. Once a
few images have been selected, I show the images to them
one at a time. I ask the students questions - for example:
‘What was the name of the person?’, in the photograph
of a soldier walking with other soldiers. I didn’t say where
he was from. I asked them, ‘Where do you think he was
born?’ ‘Does his mother love him?’ ‘What’s the taste in
his mouth? How did they know?’ There is no right or
wrong answer, but the idea is for the students to work
at trying to understand and appreciate another person- to empathise. If the students are in a seminar, or in an
informal lecture in a studio, it promotes conversation and
it’s a good idea for them to call out answers. Here they
share their observations and insights. Another method is
to distribute photographs and get them to work in groups
and describe the person, and imagine who they think he or
she is. Sometimes I have also asked them to try to identify
how separate they are from the people by asking them the
following series of questions: - Are you related to this person?
- Is this person a friend?
- Is this person from the same culture as you are?
- Is this person a friend of a friend?
- Does this person live in your suburb?
- Does this person live in your city?
- Does this person live in your country?
This is like the ‘degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon’
(the actor) game which used to be popular. I asked the
students to consider ‘how many people are you away’ from
another person. It is important to remember to select the
images and consider how you wish to order them to lead
to the final subject of empathy. You will need a couple of
images at least to allow students to practice imagining and
empathising. You may start with images of people in conflict
and lead to images of consumers, or workers, depending
on your course subject. The emphasis is best on starting
with general images and guiding the experiences to the
specific, for example the industry workers in their working
environment.(^1) A great deal of useful information on empathy is available from medical education sources, as this is acknowledged as an important part of physician training.
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?action=Search+oMD&query=empathy