Exploring theatrical costume design as a pedagogical tool for empathic design

Abstract

ABSTRACTEmpathic design, a relatively new user-centered design approach, has been utilised in the industrial design field to understand potential users’ feelings, experiences, and needs in their circumstances. To help fashion design students practise empathic design, the researcher developed a special topics course focusing on theatrical costume design. In the course, students worked on a semester-long project to provide costumes for a collaborative theatrical production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. For design development, students analysed play structure and characters, interviewed actors as the clients, and conducted group discussions. In the assessment conducted 1 year after the class concluded, students recognised that conducting a character analysis using a description table was an effective tool to empathise with characters and to convert design ideas into a physical form of design. The results of this study suggest theatrical costume design is an effective pedagogical method to practise empathic design approaches in the fashion design curriculum.