Designing with Empathy

The Power of Perspective

In SI 348, Lecturer Tonya McCarley challenges students to see accessibility not as a checklist, but as a mindset that transforms technology, design, and human connection.

When Lecturer Tonya McCarley logs onto Canvas to plan her upcoming courses, she isn't just looking at a syllabus. She is thinking about human connection.

Her course, SI 348: Accessibility, Disability, and Technology, has quickly become an undergraduate favorite at the University of Michigan School of Information. The class introduces students to a vital perspective that many have never encountered before.

For McCarley, the subject matter is deeply personal. "Full transparency, I'm hard of hearing," she shares. "And my mom has been legally blind for probably 30 or 40 years."Living with these realities firsthand gives her an acute awareness of a world that is rarely built with everyone in mind.

"When I think about life as a bell curve, the world is really tailored toward that peak at the top, which is average," McCarley explains. "If you're on either side of that bell curve, you're an outlier. And then it's like, 'Good luck.'"

SI 348 works to dismantle that "good luck" mentality by challenging future technology leaders to shift their perspective. Rather than treating accessibility as a rigid, late-stage technical compliance checklist, the course serves as a collaborative exploration of lived experiences.

McCarley structures the class as an active, hands-on learning environment where students move beyond a textbook approach and learn to see the physical and digital world through an "empathy lens." They regularly analyze the design of the U-M campus, returning to class eager to discuss the structural and technical barriers they had never noticed before.

"We have to get outside of ourselves and be able to see what other people are experiencing," McCarley says. "Once we expose people to it, you can't not see it. It automatically starts to influence the work that we do."

This focus on empathy does more than shape better designers. It builds a stronger classroom community.

That community was put to an unexpected test this past semester when McCarley faced a sudden family medical emergency in the middle of the night and had to cancel class with little notice. The response from her students was immediate and overwhelming.

"The number of contacts I had from students asking, 'Are you okay? Is there anything we can do to help? What do you need?' They didn't even have any context, and they instantly had their empathy hats on," McCarley recalls. "That gives me chills now. When we can build community together, when we can all be there for each other, that is fantastic."

As technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, SI 348 reminds the UMSI community that the ultimate goal of innovation isn't the tool itself, but the people it serves. By encouraging students to look beyond the center of the bell curve, McCarley is preparing a generation of graduates who won't simply build better technology, but a more accessible, inclusive, and thoughtful world.