Empathy Mapping Ghosts Of The Past: Participatory Workshop

This was a proposal to facilitate a face-to-face design fiction workshop with a group of x15-20 participants. This will be a practical demonstration by which the Electronic Literature community can explore the User Experience / HCI method of ‘empathy mapping’ (Gray, 2010). An empathy map is a widely used tool within the field of UX and HCI practice, used to foster a deeper insight into the customer or service user's motivations. During community led participatory workshops (as part of To Have & To Hold, 2019-24), I have developed, expanded/queered this approach - by bypassing the commercial-instrumental aim of the method (i.e. helping to deliver an efficient, aligned solution) instead using the method as a structured invitation into making messy and plural, possible personal and collective connections with historical personas/texts as a form of “thinking-feeling” as discussed by Borda (1987) and Escobar (2020).

Participants will work collaboratively in groups of 5 with up to three pieces of English folklore as key sources, these offer a variety of perspectives on the affective ideals of ‘marriage,’ bringing together fascinating and obscured tales of hope, self-sacrifice and embodied female power whilst also considering a past where gender inequality and injustices were more acute.

In this workshop we will repurpose the standard mapping quadrants: Says? Thinks? Does? Feels? towards imagining the fictional characters inside their narrative frame. The group(s) will be invited to discuss, co-create and establish some visual drivers and map cultural associations (i.e. images, words, referents, emotions). Once the group(s) have externalised their thoughts, we will come together and discuss any patterns that have emerged and attempt to consider the function (goal) of these narratives in terms of what may be gained and by whom by their existence as folklore.

The workshop will have three training goals: to introduce design fiction and empathy mapping to a new community (with takeaway key sources for follow up reading). Allow the participants to have an affective encounter with the selected folklore and begin to understand the power (and limits) of institutional frameworks that influence how we see and use folklore/texts. Lastly, to inspire in the group further opportunities to develop/extend this method as a creative way to re-engage with historical-heritage and or other forms of canonical literary texts.

References Escobar, A., & Frye, D. (2020). Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press. Fals-Borda, O. (1987). “The Application of Participatory Action-Research in Latin America.” International Sociology, 2(4), 329–347. Gray, D., Brown, s., & Macanufo, J. (2010) Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers.O’Reilly. Leishman, D. (2019-2024) To Have & To Hold. Available: https://tohavetohold.uk/home

The Key sources/texts: Hobby’s Well - named after a wishing well in Grosvenor Park, Chester. Local folklore claims that if a ‘love struck’ girl stood with one leg in the well and one leg outside then their wish for a husband would come true. We will explore how this ritual feels and what associations it triggers from our contemporary stance.

Impossible Stairs - formulated on the Wishing Steps, which are a long ‘flight’ of stairs arranged in six landings and sets of three that were built into Chester’s Roman city defence walls in 1785. Local folklore claims that if an unmarried girl can run up these steps three times without drawing a new breath, then the man of her dreams would propose to her within the year. Like Hobby’s Well the ritualistic nature and context of this folktale will be explored alongside the broader allegorical signifier of ‘stairs’ and the physicality of successfully ascending.

Charlotte Lucy – is based on the tale of C.L. Beatrix Egerton the only daughter of Wilbraham and Elizabeth Egerton of the Egerton of Tatton family, who was purportedly drowned in Rostherne Mere (Cheshire) on the eve of her wedding in 1845. However, official records cite her death as a consequence of a bronchial infection. This piece will function as a counter narrative to Hobby’s Well where we will explore the dynamics of escape from marriage through self-sacrifice.