Perception deals with the importance of creating a sense of doubt causing the user to question their perceived reality of the space. This compels the viewers to see, not merely look. By seeing, the viewers immerse themselves into the experience, perceive the objects and define what they seem to be, each in their own reality. Through the combined ideas of defamiliarization, perception and einfühlung, the users are prompted to submerge themselves, through their perception and imagination, into an emphatic relationship with the object. From this the viewers could potentially create an attachment and give the object an emotional value. It is only through the viewer and their interest that an object can be seen and become meaningful. Nowak expresses this in the article when she says: “Empathy is the mental process during which the subject becomes aware of the emotional states of the object expressed through sensory symptoms, by what is visible” (306).

    It is important to recognize with this information that any object can be empathized with since empathy relies on the viewer. The viewers are encouraged to create this type of relationship with the objects in this environment, which makes it possible for them to empathize; such encouragement can be fostered through a play on perception and the precise application of defamiliarization. “Empathy has shown how important emotions and the emotional perception of the world are and caused a shift away from a purely intellectual reflection on the relations of man with the outside world” (Nowak 324). It is important to understand the effect of empathy; how positive empathy revolves and depends heavily on contrast and difference.

    Most want to be in harmony with their environment; designers can facilitate this through careful use of perception and specific approaches like defamiliarization. It is difficult to control or predict how users will respond to an object or an environment because the way people assess emotion has to do with what they have experienced beforehand. Nowak touches on how people will have different experiences in the same environment since they react differently to the same things. Designers can influence this if they cater the environment to be able to harmonize with multiple experiences, just how Nowak refers to empathy experiences for each subject:
   

    “Man can experience directly only his own feelings: the experiences of others can affect us only indirectly. The subject in the act of empathy experiences the feelings of others, but in a different way than they do. So there is no mixing and immersion of the “I” and “You” in Einfühlung, it is not compassion or a feeling of unity, but rather one of otherness” (Nowak 322).

    Towards the end of the article, the author talks about how Stein points out the importance of how humans customarily compare other’s experience to their own. I want the users to focus solely on their individual understanding of the space and recognize the beauty of uniqueness. Optimistically, the outcome desired was one where they valued their personal experience first and then other’s experiences and that’s how it resulted.