Empathy and Mobile Applications

Abstract

Mobile devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, have gained wide-spread popularity and are part of the everyday life of billions of people. Today’s mobile phones represent a rich and powerful computing platform, given their sensing, processing, social and communication capabilities. Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand another person’s situation and feelings. Our ability to empathize affects how well we communicate our thoughts and feelings with others, how well we understand others, and how comfortable people feel communicating with us. Mobile devices have made a huge step in trying to cultivate empathy to people and different social groups through interesting applications.