Systemic-Relational Design to Enhance Empathy Processes

Abstract

The chapter investigates the role that design discipline can have in the field of human affective relationships. For this role to be effective, the designer will have to elaborate strategies, tools, and methods for the development of a new generation of relational and interactive artefacts that, through innovative analogue and digital solutions, are proposed as active mediators of interpersonal emotional relationships. Mediation can take place through the decoding of signals with a high emotional component and the management of multisensory interaction modes. The paper proposes some projects developed in this direction within the Hybrid Design Lab, a laboratory born in the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", from 2022 placed in the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples Federico II.