Experiential Design, Emotions Science, and Empathic Relationships

As a designer/researcher, I advise in social science interventions for various labs that study bias, emotions, and empathy, and have a scientist-practitioner partnership with the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, at UNC Chapel Hill. These experiences - plus 20 years of field work - have led me to a new definition of empathy, that underlies my approach to experiential learning and design.

A Redefinition of Empathy

I believe ‘empathy’ is defined wrong in the dictionary, and that this definition no longer serves our social cohesion beyond the individual. Empathy is not nor ever could be, ‘our ability to understand how someone feels’. Why? Because first, scientifically, we never know how someone feels. We barely understand how we feel half the time. Scientifically, that’s not how emotions work.

Second, in these times the idea of creating ‘understanding’, is too Cartesian and ;intellectualisable’. That’s problematic when people are not concepts to be intellectualized. It’s also colonizes the idea of ‘reality’, as it places the burden of creating understanding on the ‘most different’ being understood by the most homogenous or privileged.

For these two reasons, this standard definition of empathy is also no longer realistic or helpful. It may be even dangerous and create more misunderstanding to applying empathy this way. It’s also the basis, in my opinion, to empathy fatigue.

Instead, my work in the field and with researchers has led me to believe in the redefinition of empathy as the following:

The redefinition of Empathy is the celebration or acknowledgement of someone else’s experience to be as valid as our own. Celebration at best. Acknowledgement, when we cannot celebrate it. I believe this definition is essential to depolarize our viewpoints, retain our humanity, and cultivate our own emotional appreciation of others and of self. If you’d be interested in learning more why this definition is important or how we apply it through Empathable, you can reach out here.

Keynote, Lecture and Workshop Invitations:

• Harvard Medical School on increasing Affirming Patient Care through Experiential learning

• Society for Neuroscience and Creativity on Experiential methods in scientific experiments

• The Darden School of Business, on ‘Designing the Empathic Ethnographic Interview’

• WillowTree Apps, on Depolarizing the Conversation on Advocacy in DEI

• Ford Motor Company, ‘How we can make radical change without changing the radicals’

• Triangle Organization Development Network, (same as Ford)

• University of Virginia, Department of Engineering on ‘Human Centered Design Thinking.’

• University of Virginia, Design Thinking Class ‘Building Professional Life around Values’

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on ‘Experience Ideation and Empathic Design’

• Robins Graduate School of Business, University of Richmond, on 'Experience Innovation’

• University of Amsterdam (De Vrijeacademie), on ‘Intergroup collaborative experiences’

• Charlottesville Design Week 2019 on de-categorizing personality types.

• Keynote Speaker at San Francisco’s Social Capital Conference 2019 - Impact Accelerator, on empathic choice making with designing with a sense of connection.

• Keynote Speaker for Pensions and Investments Annual ESG Conference 2022 on ‘Belonging and the Bottom Line.’

• Keynote Speaker for Sensata - DEI Conference 2022 on ‘How we can create courageous collaboration without being discouraged.’

• Speaker at TEDX Oneonta 2022 - How we can make Radical Change without Changing the Radicals.

• Education First 2023, at their Social Emotional Learning in Action Conference.

My organizational and academic bio:

For nearly two decades, Micah J. Wonjoon Kessel has designed empathic experiences applying research on the science of emotions. Pioneering behavioral design in the Netherlands, he advised on experiential concepts with organizations such as Google, Disney, Microsoft, and projects for flourishing across social divides with the Finnish and Swedish governments, and the Diabetes Fund.  

He applies this research as CEO of Empathable, which has created a facilitated experience and an app that is changing the paradigm of how we learn through experience, resulting in increasing empathy while decreasing bias and polarization on an organizational and national scale.

Under Micah’s direction, Empathable’s core concept was pitched and became a winning recipient of the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund Award in 2020, granted by their joint council of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. The Empathable Experience has been shared with over 100 organizations, including the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, at the Black in Design Conference, and multiple Fortune 50 companies. He has presented his work at Harvard Medical School, the Society for Neuroscience and Creativity, The Boston Museum of Science, Darden School of Business, and was a 2019 Byron fellow. Micah speaks English, German, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and some French and enjoys speaking and writing on the topic of experience and subjective realism. 

Novel extras: As a young adult, Micah performed at the Metropolitan Opera, studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands, and focused his masters on human centered design at the Royal Academy of Art in Belgium. He then accelerated his understanding of experiential interaction and behavior through founding the immersive design bureau, Sherlocked Amsterdam, then considered the world’s top rated escape games according to TripAdvisor.