Conference Agenda

Empathy is often invoked as a concept of foundational significance to the design process (Cross, 1982): as we design for others, we must seek to gain empathic understanding of them and their experiences. Recent advances in the capabilities of AI tools have seen a developing interest in their ability to simulate / emulate empathy. Studies show that humans interacting with AI chat agents consistently rate these systems as more empathetic than human interlocutors (Calero & Herrera, 2025; Sorin et al., 2024). Just as these AI tools have become widely accessible and easily applied across many areas of human activity, so too they are being adopted and integrated into design activity. Design processes typically recognised as enhancing empathy with users have been conducted with LLMs substituting for human participation, including persona development (Kocaballi, 2024; Schuller et al, 2024), scenario development (Spaniol and Rowland, 2022), stakeholder interviews (Kocaballi, 2024; Rime 2025) and empathy mapping (Higuera and Macías, 2023).

Useful applications of AI within design research and practice are potentially extensive, and should be explored and exploited where appropriate. However, in experimenting with the use of these tools, it is vital that we critically and carefully reflect on the nature of the systems we are dealing with, what their capabilities and limitations are, and how these differ from established understandings of human empathic experience in design contexts.