Designing for empathy in higher education: a multiple case study of team-based learning with the empathic user experience research process (EUXRP)

Empathy is increasingly recognized as a critical educational and professional competency, yet its integration into interdisciplinary design education often remains superficial, instrumentalized, or unevenly applied. This dissertation introduces and examines the Empathic User Experience Research Process (EUXRP)—a structured, iterative pedagogical framework designed to cultivate empathy as a sustained, ethically grounded, and socially responsive practice across diverse cultural and disciplinary contexts. Drawing on theories of participatory design, constructivist learning, intercultural communication, and transformative pedagogy, EUXRP reframes empathy not as a discrete design phase but as an embodied, relational, and reflective stance toward users, collaborators, and future stakeholders. Using a qualitative, constructivist multiple case study approach, the study investigates three university-level courses in the United States and South Korea—spanning environmental design, disability design, and teacher education—to explore how students develop empathy through immersive role-play, user-expert engagement, and collaborative meaning-making. Findings indicate that empathy development is nonlinear, emotionally complex, and shaped by cultural norms, requiring intentional scaffolding, psychological safety, and context-responsive facilitation. Across all cases, EUXRP supported perspective transformation, professional identity development, and enhanced capacities in ethical reasoning, inclusive communication, and justice-oriented design. As a modular and transferable framework, EUXRP advances empathy-based pedagogy and offers concrete tools for educators seeking to integrate equity, ethics, and experiential learning into human-centered curricula.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Informatics

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Moon, Eunmi Kim

Contributors dc:contributor

• McDonagh, Deana
• Salamanca, Juan
• Guntzviller, Lisa
• Kim, JungMi

• Empathy-Based Pedagogy
• Empathic User Experience Research Process (EUXRP)
• Empathy Development
• Role-playing in Education
• Team-Based Learning
• Experiential Learning

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Eunmi Moon

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132567

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132567