Unexpected Beauty: How Empathetic Design Can Allow Us to Break Away | 2026 SEGD Academic Summit

Unexpected Beauty: How Empathetic Design Can Allow Us to Break Away From Prescriptive Norms | 2026 SEGD Academic Summit Speaker: Andrea Benatar, Experiential Designer at CannonDesign How can empathetic design help experiential designers create spaces that center people before assumptions, industry norms, or aesthetics? In this 2026 SEGD Academic Summit presentation, Andrea Benatar, Experiential Designer at CannonDesign, shares her research study, Unexpected Beauty: How Empathetic Design Can Allow Us to Break Away From Prescriptive Norms. Through a case study of Maggie’s Centers, Andrea explores how emotion-led spatial design can support visitor experience, autonomy, comfort, placemaking, and connection. Rather than beginning with a project’s industry category, Andrea asks what happens when designers start with the people moving through the space. Her talk examines empathetic design, cancer support environments, emotion as a design tool, and a practical exercise for reframing design problems around feeling, behavior, and lived experience. Presented as part of the 2026 SEGD Academic Summit, this session offers designers, educators, researchers, and students a thoughtful framework for creating more meaningful experiential environments. Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Unexpected Beauty 00:47 Designing for the People Crossing the Bridge 01:12 Project Purpose and Empathy-Driven Design 01:58 Maggie’s Centers as Case Study 02:49 Defining Empathetic Design 03:44 Empathetic Design Framework 04:12 Maggie’s Centers Background and Mission 05:33 Maggie’s Design Brief 06:33 Site Visit 1: Maggie’s Bart’s in London 07:39 Vulnerability, Comfort, and Personal Experience 08:50 Site Visit 2: Maggie’s Royal Marsden 09:37 Homelike Design and Building as Support 10:21 Color, Mood, and Flexible Space 11:19 Site Visit 3: Fundació Kālida in Barcelona 12:23 Local Architecture and Cultural Belonging 13:19 Key Takeaway: Placemaking 14:13 Key Takeaway: Emotion as a Design Tool 15:08 Key Takeaway: Autonomy and Choice 15:58 Emotion-Led Design Exercise 19:31 Final Takeaways from Maggie’s Centers 20:36 Acknowledgments and Closing #SEGD #AcademicSummit #ExperientialDesign #EmpatheticDesign #DesignResearch This talk will be featured in Communication + Place, the official journal of experiential design, which showcases research by academics and professionals advancing the field through creative research, curriculum development, and user-centric testing. Find this at https://segd.org/resources-education/... About SEGD: SEGD is the global multidisciplinary community for experiential graphic design. We are designers of experiences connecting people to place. Visit us at https://segd.org.