Empathizing with Loneliness: Defining Technological and Design Requirements in Academic Education Meira Levy School of Industrial Engineering and Management Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art Ramat-Gan, Israel Department of Information Systems lmeira@shenkar.ac.il Assaf Krebs The Unit for History and Philosophy of Art, Design and Technology Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art Ramat-Gan, Israel Assaf.krebs@shenkar.ac.il Idit Barak Fashion Design Department Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art Ramat-Gan, Israel iditbarak@shenkar.ac.il Abstract—Loneliness has been recognized as one of the major so- cial problem of the 21 th century. This study summarizes the ‘Jam week’ of Shenkar College of Engineering Design and Art. During the days of the Jam week, a four days' academic hackathon-like course, students addressed challenges related to loneliness provided by five social organizations. The whole event was virtual and was handled through an online collaborative whiteboard platform (Miro) and Zoom meetings. The design thinking methodology served as the shared methodology according to which multidisciplinary teams of engineering and design students worked and proposed solutions in the form of conceptual videos and posters. During the event, the students were asked to fill a questionnaire, which examined their empathy de- velopment in three dimensions: skills, orientation and being. The findings show how this academic educational program fostered em- pathy in all three dimensions and leveraged creativity, which allowed interesting and innovative prototypes to develop, which included both technological and design aspects. This study highlights the need to foster new educational programs that involve students from diverse disciplines that cope with challenges of well-being. Such academic programs can enhance students’ professional skills and encourage collaborative human-centered solutions for well-being. Index Terms—Requirements, empathy, design thinking (DT), loneliness I. INTRODUCTION Loneliness is one of the major problems in the 21 th century (Lim, Eres, & Vasan, 2020). Loneliness decreases well-being (WB) which has been recognized as a major modern life chal- lenge that is characterized by tension, stress, consumption of un- healthy food, and reduced physical activity (Johnson et al., 2016). The World Health Organization calls for an inclusive health concept that encompasses physical, mental, and social WB and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (Schulte et al., 2015). The paper describes a multidisciplinary annual educational event, entitled ‘Jam week’ at Shenkar, College of Engineering, 1 https://miro.com/ Design and Art, where students from the faculties of engineer- ing, design and the school of fine art, addressed loneliness chal- lenges, applying technology and design practices. This year the authors of this paper managed the entire event, which included 700 students, five external organizations (who presented their own challenges in regard to loneliness), and 50 Shenkar lectur- ers from diverse disciplines. 25 of the lectures were mentors of students' teams and 25 of them acted as professional consult- ants for the teams. The teams addressed loneliness challenge of different populations: old aged people, Covid-19 hospital de- partment, mentally challenged people, children with neurologi- cal problems, and Z-generation. All the teams worked accord- ing to the DT approach, mainly following the Empathy, Define, Ideation and Prototype stages. The event was virtual, and all the process was handled through Zoom and Miro 1 , an online collaborative whiteboard platform. Videos explaining the DT and human centered design, including exercises to follow were previously taped and inserted into Miro, where there was a shared space for group activities as well as individual working places for each team. The solutions of the teams were presented through video pitch of 3 minutes and a poster. During the event the students were asked to submit reflections forms each day. These forms included empathy questionnaire that was devel- oped according to the empathy model that will be presented in the next section. This paper is organized as follows: related work regarding empathy model and the DT methodology is presented, followed by presentation of the results of the Jam week. The paper con- cludes with a discussion and suggestions for future research di- rections. II. EMPATHY IN ENGINEERING Empathy is considered a necessary professional skill for en- gineers in the 21 st century (Walther, Miller, & Sochacka, 2017)(Penzenstadler, Schlosser, Haller, & Frenzel, 2009) and, as Hecker noted, it is among soft skills that "may have as great an