To empathize with people you need to understand their perspective on the world. To understand their world, you need to gather the feelings that person is experiencing.  

Once you have empathized with people, you can understand their needs and begin to think about solutions to the problems they are facing. Using the design thinking process that starts with empathy, is anincredibly effective way to create solutions to problems people are facing.

Creating projects for students that have them design solutions for humans, is authentic education. Projects like this have students make stuff for meaningful purposes.

The process below guides designers to start with empathy, work through engineering methods and end with redesigning as needed.

Design Thinking Process for Humans

Elsevier describes the 10 major engineering challenges of the next decade. They state that the 2nd most important challenge for engineers is to:

Educating first world engineers to understand how to solve third world problems.

The Renewable Resources Journal reports that the world’s population will grow by 2 billion over the next two decades, 95% of this in developing or underdeveloped countries. Engineers must learn new ways to solve problems in these countries.

Teaching students to design for humans will help them learn these vital problem solving skills. Empathizing with people who are different than ourselves is a skill we can teach our children through transforming STEM mindsets and cultures in schools.

More info on Designing for Humans coming soon!