Team2

Empathy Team 2.0

Some of the Team

About the Course

"Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centered Design is a seven-week curriculum that will introduce you to the concepts of human-centered design and how this approach can be used to create innovative, effective, and sustainable solutions for social change. This course has been created to reach those who are brand new to human-centered design, so no prior experience required (though we of course welcome previous students to continue honing your human-centered design skills!)"

What is Human-Centered Design?

Our Team Design Challenge Scenario

The role play scenario we have for our team is that we are a design company called "The Empathy Team" and are experts and specialized in designing empathic organisational cultures. The HUB founders have read articles and books about how important empathy is in creating an effective organizational culture and have hired us to redesign the HUB to have a more empathic culture.

References the HUB leadership read:

- Empathy in the Workplace Magazine
- Empathy on The Edge: Scaling and Sustaining a Human-Centered Approach in the Evolving Practice of Design, by IDEO
- "Design empathy is an approach that draws upon people’s real-world experiences to address modern challenges. When companies allow a deep emotional understanding of people’s needs to inspire them—and transform their work, their teams, and even their organization at large—they unlock the creative capacity for innovation.In this essay, we’ll explore how design empathy works, its value to businesses, and some ways in which it can be used to effect positive change. "
- Book: Organizing through Empathy
- "This book challenges the existing paradigm of capitalism by providing scientific evidence and empirical data that empathy is the most important organizing mechanism. The book is unique in that it provides a comprehensive review of the transformational qualities of empathy in personal, organizational and local contexts. Integrating an understanding based upon scientific studies of why the fields of positive psychology and organizational scholarship are important, it examines the evidence from neuroscience and presents leading-edge studies from quantum physics with implications for the organizational field. Together the chapters in this book attempt to demonstrate how empathy helps in the reduction of human suffering and the creation of a more just society."
- Book: The Practice of Empathy-Based Management
  - "Every person in your organization desires to be understood and accepted. The purpose of this book is to teach you how to empathize with each of your employees, and create a better work environment. When work days become mundane, you will learn how to create a sense of connection with your employees. During stressful times, you can display empathy to calm and reassure each employee, so that they can think clearly and problem solve.How Do I Keep My Employees Motivated? provides clear, specific techniques that teach you how to empathize and create an atmosphere where everyone working for you feels accepted and understood. Through empathy you will be able to create an environment that results in professional growth.ecological, spiritual and aesthetic well-being of organizations and society rather than the more common management principles of maximizing profit and efficiency. "

Links and Resources

Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centered Design - Overview of Course
Our Team Page - On Acumen's course social media site.
Peoples Availability During the Week. What day and time work best for meetings.
Team Shared Google Doc (Google Doc)
d.school: Designing Empathy Based Organizations - A class at the Stanford d.school similar to our design challenge.
Empathy in Design Info (Edwin's list of resources.)

Agreements

* We will go through the course doing our own design challenge of:

How might we raise the level of empathy at the Oakland Impact HUB?

* Because we are doing our own challenge it takes a bit more time so we will go for 10 weeks instead of 7 weeks.

* From having done the course before, we found it's good to start with several full short iterations of the design process. So at the first 3 meetings we will do a full iteration of the process each meeting to get familiar with the full process before going into depths with the steps of the course.

* We will try to document, photograph and video tape our meetings and work as much as possible.

* We have a commitment to take part in the entire course with the team.

Members