Designing for Empathy –A Workshop at the MIT Media Lab

DESIGNING FOR EMPATHY is an invitation to design together those transformative spaces, experiences, and products that might foster empathy towards all of humanity and the planet. The workshop will offer three experiential learning opportunities, through which the participants will explore several of the ingredients of the Alchemy of Empathy –a new framework that explores empathy for its design elements such as proximity, curiosity, dialogue, collective journeying, and contemplation. The workshop will offer an opportunity to contemplate on the following overarching questions: “What is the object of our empathy; how do we perceive the other?” “What is the Alchemy of Empathy; what are some of the ingredients of pragmatic perspective shift?” and “What are the Scope and the Spectrum of Empathy; how our knowledge of empathy can help us create a better world?”. The workshop will be facilitated by Elif Gokcigdem, PhD, Founder of Empathy-Building Through Museums Initiative, and the Editor of Designing for Empathy; in collaboration with: Philip Himberg, theater activist, playwright, and creative director of MacDowell Colony, and Zorana Ivcevic, PhD, Research Scientist and Director of Creativity and Emotions Lab at the Yale University.

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