An Empathy-to-Testing Workshop to Strengthen Human Factors Evaluation in Design Education

Abstract

This paper reports an experiential workshop intervention embedded in an undergraduate human factors (HF) course for industrial design. The intervention followed an empathy-to-testing sequence. Before the workshop, students completed an empathy-oriented preparation activity by imitating age-related and disability-related constraints to sensitize them to embodied interaction barriers and everyday usability issues. During the workshop, students engaged in hands-on tasks that deliberately exposed usability and ergonomic failures, followed by guided reflection and rapid redesign. The workshop explicitly emphasized the “test phase” of the design process: students defined simple evaluation goals, selected observable criteria, and conducted basic tests of early concepts and discussion of core principles (affordances, feedback, mapping, constraints, and error prevention) to connect observations to theory.Effectiveness was evaluated using a mixed-methods approach focused on three indicators: a pre–post motivation questionnaire (learning motivation and self-efficacy), a post-workshop questionnaire on perceived usefulness and transfer intention, and a course exam assessing core HF knowledge. Results indicated increased motivation toward HF learning and strong perceived value of embodied simulation and testing-oriented practice for making abstract principles observable and actionable. Students reported greater confidence in identifying HF issues and justifying design decisions with evidence, while exam outcomes indicate that an experiential emphasis can coexist with theoretical consolidation. The study offers practical evidence for integrating feasible HF evaluation into early-stage design education.

Keywords: Human Factors Education, Design Education, Experiential Learning, Design Workshop

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008001