Emotional Tool Design: A Perspective on How to Generate Empathy in Higher Education Students

Empathy is an ability that should be put on practice by higher education students. The way of practicing empathy is a research field in which the best pedagogical tools are to be discovered. Empathy can be considered a competence or skill that should be considered in training students to focus on problem-solving. The Emotional Tool Design (ETD) implementation can help to create dynamics that improve the ability to empathize. This paper evaluates seven ETD designed to develop empathy in architecture, design, and engineering students. The tool's function is based on observing and identifying an emotion expressed by a character (emoji/emoticon). Seventy students participated in an online survey where they were asked to observe, identify, and understand the emotions expressed by seven tools based on PrEmo dynamics tool. This survey contained an empathy test (Interpersonal Reactivity Index), having three questions on the perception of the seven tools, and two comparative emotion identification questions at the end of the survey. The results of this study allows to conclude that the surveyed students possessed a low empathy component, but other competencies, such as fantasy and perspective-taking, enhanced the ETDs experience. For the students, emojis/emoticons were acceptable, particularly the non-anthropomorphic type. In addition, the student's profiles did not determine a differential in their way of empathizing; it was not significant for their empathy with the emotions displayed by the ETDs. Finally, the emoji/emoticon quality determines the empathy and emotional tools to work for the students. The ETDs have proven to be tools that can introduce students of any career to experience an empathy process.