Empathy is core to the designer’s toolkit. Through empathy, a designer’s creativity is sparked, and the world sees innovation in everything from vacuums to emergency rooms. Enter Design Thinking’s influence on business. In this climate, we see empathy increasingly commoditized and becoming a box-ticking exercise. Are we in danger of design shifting away from genuine human-centeredness? This talk examines the evolution of empathy in design and reclaiming the designer’s role in Design Thinking.

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