Persona design aims to increase students' ability to understand their target users and address their needs. Yet, there is a lack of conceptual frameworks that help students systematically conceptualise user needs, specifically the two key requirements of persona design: representativeness and empathy. In this study, we find an alternative method…

We have explored designers having empathy for the audience of focus, designers using empathy as a means to an end, and designers using empathy to deliver a meaningful design deliverable. Our research has evolved from studying how designers reflect on their own design context and the audience's given circumstance to designers acting on moments of…

This paper presents the evaluation of a design research project that combines artistic practice and academic theory to demonstrate how problem-based learning (PBL) can bridge the gap between those fields. "Researching Empathy Through Staged Performance" was a master's thesis project in the field of interaction design and consisted of an…

Music conservatoires have generally neglected focusing on a key issue: that of audiences--their needs and wants, why they value particular music, and how music actually functions in any particular community. Yet audience is typically a musician's first contact with the "real world"; understanding audience (one's market or customers) is…

Instructional designers are tasked with making instructional strategy decisions to facilitate achievement of learning outcomes as part of their professional responsibilities. While the instructional design process includes learner analysis, that analysis alone does not embody opportunities to assist instructional designers with demonstrations of…

In my three-article dissertation, "Concerning the Other: Empathic Discourse in Worldwide, National, and Student-Authored Textbook Historical Narratives," I explore how textbook authors empathize with marginalized groups. My data includes approximately 1,000 textbooks published from 1910 to 2010 from over 100 countries around the world,…

In this Teaching Tips article, the author argues for a dialogic conception of voice, based in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. He demonstrates a dialogic view of voice in action, using two writing examples about the same topic from his daughter, a fifth-grade student. He then provides five practical tips for teaching a dialogic conception of voice in…

Experts in science communication were asked to identify the essential elements of a science communication course for post-graduate students. A Delphi methodology provided a framework for a research design that accessed their opinions and allowed them to contribute to, reflect on and identify 10 essential elements. There was a high level of…

"Fresh, fearless, more or less brilliant stuff"--if you want to get hired. That sums up the importance of authentic assessment in writing and the unwitting harm caused by typically vapid writing prompts and rubrics, and rigid use of the so-called writing process. The point of writing is to have something to say and to make a difference in saying…