ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study which describes how empathic conversations with citizens can inspire and inform the regeneration of a large site including an old tin mine in Cornwall. The Heartlands case study in this section is a design research project that explores possible future experiences of the people that will visit and work at a large regenerated cultural and social site around an old tin mine in Cornwall, UK. At Heartlands, focusing on people's experiences through empathic conversations helped to move from thinking about buildings to thinking about services. The team responsible for setting up the empathic conversations included design researchers with backgrounds in social research, user-centred design and architecture. Empathic conversations build on disciplines older than service design, such as user-centred design and inclusive design, which position the user at the centre of the design process. The activities were explicitly aimed at setting up empathic conversations between the design teams and future users, about future experiences of specific aspects of Heartlands.
