Empathy in Design

When faced with adversity, environments can play a pivotal role in shaping emotional resilience and well-being. Designers have a unique opportunity to craft spaces that go beyond functionality to nurture the human spirit. That’s why, as a recipient of IA’s Spark Fellowship, I set out to explore how empathetic design can transform lives—starting with a deep dive into Maggie’s cancer support centers.

Understanding Empathetic Design

Empathetic design prioritizes the needs of individuals using a space. It’s not just about aesthetics; it’s about creating an environment that feels supportive, comforting, and empowering. As designers, this concept allows us to challenge our assumptions and biases, and to gain a deeper understanding of our end users. In my search for exemplary models of this philosophy, Maggie’s stood out as a beacon of inspiration.

A Legacy of Care

Maggie’s, a nonprofit organization, offers free cancer support through uniquely designed centers that feel more like homes than healthcare facilities. Founded by Maggie Jencks, an architect and writer who faced cancer herself, the centers now span 31 locations globally. Each Maggie's center offers a wide range of services for cancer patients and family members, including but not limited to counseling and mental health services, financial services, and daily group activities. While they are not treatment centers, each space is designed by a renowned architect, yet they all share a unifying ethos: to create environments that offer solace, hope, and dignity.

Unlike clinical settings, the centers prioritize autonomy and emotional well-being. From the scale of the buildings to the materials used, every detail is meticulously considered to foster a sense of control and comfort, often lost during treatment journeys.

A Journey Through Design

During my fellowship, I visited Maggie’s centers in London, Sutton, and Barcelona. Each reflected its cultural and architectural context while embodying the same empathetic principles. At Maggie’s Barts in London, what stood out most was the way the light-filled spaces made you feel—warm, safe, and cared for—while offering a sense of privacy and ease. At Maggie’s Royal Marsden, in Sutton, the bold and vibrant colors left a lasting impression and evoked a sense of energy and positivity. Lastly, at Fundació Kālida in Barcelona, the integration of local materials and local architectural details set the center apart from its UK counterparts. These differences underscored how empathetic design is not one-size-fits-all, it can and should be tailored to resonate with diverse communities.

Maggie's Barts (left), Maggie's Royal Marsden (middle), and Maggie's Fundació Kālida (right). While the three centers leverage different design principles, the experience created for visitors is largely the same.

Across all centers, each space type is heavily linked to an emotion. The Maggie’s Design Brief, which guides the design process for each center, specifies how each area should feel rather than how each space should look. This approach results in centers that are completely unique yet evoke the same sentiment. For instance, spaces designed to promote calm or connection are imbued with sensory elements that intuitively guide visitors toward these feelings.

I noticed several strong links to IA’s Harmonic Principles™ across all centers. For instance, "salient features" and "equitable beauty" come to life through locally focused design elements, such as the interior ceilings referencing a traditional regional style called the "Bóveda catalana." Details like this, discovered as you walk through, allow locals to feel immediately welcome and represented in their environment. These features also make the space distinct and set apart from the hospital—where many visitors come from—underscoring the "salient features" principle. Such elements exemplify how design can reflect cultural identity while simultaneously fostering warmth and safety. Empathy and compassion therefore, become key lenses through which the harmonic principles are realized.

Fundació Kālida brings in architectural traditions and locally sourced materials from the Catalonia region to not only complement but form a part of the city's incredible landscape.

Lessons and Implications

Maggie’s encourages a shift in the design process: pausing to consider feelings and behavior before diving into palettes and aesthetics. This empathetic approach redefines the starting point for design, placing human needs on par with functional and aesthetic considerations. By doing so, designers can create spaces that resonate more deeply with end users, including those we may not directly interact with.

Understanding emotion is central to understanding behavior, which in turn is essential for crafting meaningful designs. By prioritizing how spaces can evoke desired reactions, we pave the way for more impactful, human-centered environments.

Outcomes

My fellowship at Maggie's has deepened my understanding of how design can heal, aligning with IA’s mission to create spaces that inspire and connect. It has also sparked new perspectives from the outset: How can we consistently prioritize psychological well-being in our designs? How can we translate the empathetic design principles used in healthcare environments to other sectors, ensuring that all spaces foster comfort and human connection?

As part of my exploration, I developed a set of exercises to use emotion as a design tool from the project's inception, preceding any visual direction. These exercises, inspired by the Maggie’s Design Brief, help identify the feelings we aim to evoke, and the experiences needed to achieve them. Through this empathetic lens, we can transform spaces to support not only functionality but also the human spirit, making them catalysts for positive change.