EMPATHY-GUIDED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF EMPATHY IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

LIDIANY CERQUEIRA SANTOS

EMPATHY-GUIDED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF EMPATHY IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Context. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the emotions of others, a critical skill for software practitioners as it contributes to improved software quality, communication, collaboration, and work environments. Despite its importance, empathy remains an underexplored topic in Software Engineering (SE) research.
Aims. To address this knowledge gap, this dissertation aims to deepen our understanding of empathy in SE by investigating how it is defined, practiced, and experienced by software practitioners, as well as identifying barriers and effects related to empathetic behavior in development contexts.
Method. We adopted a mixed-methods approach. First, we conducted a qualitative analysis of grey literature from practitioner platforms (DEV and Medium). Then, we surveyed software practitioners within a large software organization to quantitatively and qualitatively examine empathy-related perceptions and behaviors. We also evaluated our proposed framework with empathy experts.
Results. The study revealed different meanings and a high perceived value of empathy, as well as barriers that hinder its application in software teams. We identified a set of empathetic practices and categorized them into empathy dimensions based on exploratory factor analysis. We also found that empathy practices are closely linked to positive outcomes, ranging from productivity and technical quality to collaboration, well-being, and professional growth, reinforcing the practical relevance of empathy across multiple dimensions of software practice. These insights informed the development of a conceptual framework of empathy in SE, which was validated through experts' feedback.
Conclusion. This research advances the understanding of empathy in software engineering by offering a theoretically and empirically grounded framework, a curated dataset, and practical implications for teams and organizations. It lays the foundation for future work on empathy-driven practices, tools, and interventions in software development.

Manoel Gomes de Mendonça Neto (PGCOMP-UFBA)

José Amâncio Macedo Santos (UEFS)

Bianca Trinkenreich (Colorado State University - EUA)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/8366732103576524

Kiev Santos da Gama (CIN-UFPE)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/6185519785664724

Renato Lima Novais (IFBA-Salvador)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/5036544358013553

Thiago Souto Mendes (IFBA-Simões Filho)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/0083867893889883

Glauco de Figueiredo Carneiro (UFS)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/4951846457502161

Mário André de Freitas Farias (IFS-Aracaju)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/8650672176979968

Cláudio Nogueira Sant`Anna (IC-UFBA)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/3228159608138969

Rodrigo Rocha Gomes e Souza (IC-UFBA)

http://lattes.cnpq.br/7697794806460975

21 Jul, 2025

8:30 AM

O trabalho tem grande importância social, pois a área de fatores humanos é crítica em ambiente de desenvolvimento de software. Em particular a empatia é uma habilidade essencial para profissionais de software, pois contribui para a melhoria da qualidade do software, da comunicação, da colaboração e do ambiente de trabalho. Apesar de sua importância, a empatia continua sendo um tema pouco explorado na pesquisa em Engenharia de Software (ES). A tese atacou o problema com grande sucesso e impacto científico, incluindo um trabalho premiado no SBES, e quatro artigos em periódicos. Dois já aceitos (IEEE Software e ACM TOSEM) e dois artigos no prelo.