ROLE-PLAYING TECHNIQUES AS AN APPROACH FOR EMPATHIZING IN THE DESIGN PROCESS

Abstract

Empathy comes from imagining another person's situation in various ways to imagine their feelings
and experiences. Empathizing with others is very important for designers. In the early phases of the
design process, designers go through various research processes to develop empathy with target
users. One of the important techniques for developing empathy is role-playing, which is the activity
in which people do and say something by pretending to be someone else or pretending to be in a
particular situation. Role-playing involves techniques used in the tradition of user-centered and participatory design.
Role-playing techniques consist of various components such as actors, facilitators, stage props and
scenario, and there are differences in the use of these components in the design process, and
accordingly, we come across with different names in the role-playing employed for the design
process. These Role-playing techniques differ from each other in that the authors who produce and
use the technique make use of it at different phases of the design process, by employing various
actors, in fictional or real contexts and with prototypes at different resolutions. In the study, roleplaying techniques that contributed to different phases of the design process in the design literature
were explained with examples and a classification was made over the context of the application
phases, actors and prototypes of these techniques.