Empathic design: imagining the cognitive and emotional learner experience

TLDR: In an exploratory mixed-methods study examined how instructional designers' imagined the cognitive and emotional learner experience as they designed a collaboration-based interactive case study to promote interaction and collaboration among physicians, radiobiologists, and radiation physicists as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: In an effort to create meaningful user experiences, instructional designers participate in continuous projection and reflection during design. Empathic design draws on instructional designers’ sensitivity toward their learners as a reference for design. Empathic forecasting, or predictions about an emotional reaction to future events, is an important influence on design in general and may be particularly meaningful for empathic design. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined how instructional designers’ imagined the cognitive and emotional learner experience as they designed a collaboration-based interactive case study to promote interaction and collaboration among physicians, radiobiologists, and radiation physicists. We employed a protocol analysis methodology to document the verbal exchanges of members of this design team during collaborative meetings. Online surveys that included scale-based ratings and short open-ended questions assessed learners’ perceptions of their instructional experience. Findings indicate that instructional designers visualized learner interaction with the Virtual Hospital, and emoted learner feelings with the activity while engaging in design. User results indicate that the outcome the instructional designers envisioned for the user experience aligned with user perceptions of their experiences during the activity.