A contribuição do design para o desenvolvimento da experiência empática em crianças de idade escolar

Abstract

Beyond the field of emotional design that studies ways to evoke and prevent ephemeral emotions, it is possible to highlight new research that focus on affective experience in a more embracing and lasting view. Among them is the design for human development, which aims to understand how design may contribute - through toys and games that stimulate the learning of social skills - so that children manifest socially competent behavior. Within social skills, we have chosen to work with empathy, which is defined as an affective expression that enables understanding and sharing experiences of another. The purpose of this work is to investigate how the design of toys and games - from design guidelines - can help to stimulate the empathic experience in children of school age. For that, we used the action research methodology. Meetings were held with specialists - designers and psychologists - to elaborate project guidelines. These were used in a project that resulted in a game called me too! (eu também!). The data was gathered from eight rounds with groups of four children in the third year of elementary school interacting with the developed game. A content analysis of these data allowed the observation of empathic behavior - manifested through speeches and actions - of those children when interacting with each other in the dynamics proposed by the game. A discussion of these responses related to each of the project guidelines sought to validate their effectiveness, of which the following were verified: design considering the stage of school life of children; to fit within the neutral gender sphere; to promote engagement; to have a ludic and fantastic theme; use characters; stimulate the exchange of perspective; explore the reasons of the revelations that emerge in the game; seek different levels of complexity in the dynamics; talk about emotions and feelings; stimulate self-revelation; and encourage collaboration.