Empathy has become an essential concept for coarticulating design's creative efficacy and allocentricity. While subject to many definitions, a common methodological interest has tended to cast empathy as a tool, used deliberately and reflectively. The result has been an emphasis on the intentional, reflective, and interpretively rich dimensions of empathy over their automatic and inchoate foundations. Uncovering the “passive” dimension of empathy helps put empathy's role in design in a new perspective. It illuminates the role of empathy in the most basic tasks of design and differentiates the contributions of empathy from those of reflective and imaginative techniques. Taking passivity into account can consequently mediate disputes about the role of empathy in design and guide methodological choices in design projects.

移情已成为共同表达设计的创造性功效和非中心性的基本概念。尽管有许多定义，但一种常见的方法论兴趣倾向于将同理心视为一种工具，有意识地和反思地使用。其结果是强调同理心的意向性、反思性和解释性丰富的维度，而不是其自动和早期的基础。揭示同理心的“被动”维度有助于从新的角度看待同理心在设计中的作用。它阐明了同理心在最基本的设计任务中的作用，并将同理心的贡献与反思和想象技术的贡献区分开来。因此，将被动性考虑在内可以调解关于同理心在设计中的作用的争论，并指导设计项目中的方法选择。