Font Size: 

Empathic Design can be seen as the designer using empathy throughout the Design process. Empathy fully comprehends the object of contemplation through entering one’s personality into it. Through enhancing communication within a design team, empathy can be shown between the designer and user, project manager, tool maker, and factory assemblers. Empathic Design is a research model, which when considered within Human Centered Design and employed alongside the Design Methods structure can ensure innovative design solutions which capture the real needs of users. By addressing the problem of our throwaway society at the forefront of the design process we can start to eliminate the production of products which are disgarded early on in their product life, due to a real need not being met. This paper explores how designers can build Empathic Design through understanding people. It examines Empathic Design with regards to the need of designers to develop an interdependent relationship with the user in order to build empathy into products. The author outlines an approach designers can utilise, using methods and techniques that can be implemented into the formative stages of the design process to push innovation. Two case studies involving products from leading businesses, are analysed to show the outcome of employing empathic methods. The result is a product that goes beyond the user’s expectations and contains the user’s values, whilst ensuring that the product has been produced to address a relevant need. Our environment can surely only benefit from designer’s adopting an empathic approach when used alongside eco-design and tailoring design solutions to the broader sustainability considerations in product development. Keywords: Empathic Design, Empathic Methods & Techniques, People, Innovation  2 Planned Obsolescence: Aesthetic over Functional - The Emergence, Effects and Ethics E Dimla School of Engineering, University of Portsmouth, PORTSMOUTH Hants, PO1 3DJ UK  Abstract Aesthetic Obsolescence is a form of planned obsolescence involving the alteration of superficial characteristics of a product to create a new model, and in turn make the previous undesirable, thus rendering it obsolete despite it still performing its primary function. By continually introducing new designs and discontinuing others, the manufacturer creates a cycle of fashion aided by marketing. This paper traces the emergence of aesthetic obsolescence in the 1930s, and its initial utilisation in the automotive industry. It attempts to provide an explanation for its formidable rise in the marketing strategies of the 20th century, the effects of this on the consumer, and the resulting over-consumption that created the ‘disposable society’. In addition, a selected case study of the mobile phone is subjectively used to illustrate modern exploitation of the aesthetic obsolescence strategy. The attitudes of major brands are assessed by looking at particular marketing strategies currently employed. To conclude, the design issue of sustainability is dealt with in relation to an ethically sound route for the much-criticised concept of aesthetic obsolescence. Issues of sustainability in design continue to come to the forefront of the design press, and obsolescence in products is gaining more exposure. This highlights that the solution is not such a move into a static aesthetic but a transition into attractive sustainable products that accommodate the sustainable materials and processes available to the designer. Keywords: Aesthetic Obsolescence, Streamlining, Fashion, Style, Sustainability.