Jessica Meharry
Associate Professor, DePaul University
Queering Empathy
Empathy is widely used as the initial stage of the design process to understand users and meet their needs and desires. However, these methods have been critiqued for commodifying empathy in commercial practice, centering the designer instead of the user, and failing to account for team dynamics. Empathy is also under attack in political spheres, increasing the dehumanization of others. To address these criticisms, I explore the value of empathy in design processes and examine how queer theory and queering methodologies can help designers move past “walking in someone else’s shoes” towards intersectional design processes rooted in political responsibility. I offer six orientations that help designers to: challenge normative assumptions and categories, attend to the body, center compassion, cultivate an ethics of care, focus on material conditions, and redirect power. Queering empathy can provide new strategies for a more ethical, contextual, and reflexive approach to understanding others.
About Jessica
Jessica Meharry (she/her) is a designer, researcher, facilitator, and educator who focuses on justice-oriented design methodologies in professional practice.
Jessica is currently a n Associate Professor in the School of Design at DePaul University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in graphic design and human-centered design. Previously, she served as a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech and an Associate Professor of Design Management and the Director of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Columbia College Chicago. In May of 2022, she received a PhD in Design from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. Under the direction of Carlos Teixeira and Laura Forlano, her dissertation topic was “Sensemaking for Power Asymmetries in Anti-Oppressive Design Practice”.
Her scholarly research focuses on three intersecting lines of inquiry that explore equitable design methodologies in both practice and pedagogy: anti-oppressive design practices for professional designers; envisioning anti-racist futures through design methods; and equity-oriented experiential education within design pedagogy and curricula.
Jessica also actively maintains an award-winning creative practice of graphic design projects, for both personal explorations and professional clients.