Role Reversal is role-play where the participants get into another participant’s shoes. A role-play activity, especially with the roles reversed, allows the participants to understand each other’s perspectives and promotes empathy among the participants. Empathy is the ability to identify with another person as well as their situation. Additionally, Role Reversal also involves reflection. This method, therefore, allows the participants as well as the researchers (who may be participants playing the opposing role or observing the Role Reversal) to expand their thoughts, experiences and manage their expectations through Role Reversal.
A Role Reversal, like a role-play activity, involves playing out a scenario, except instead of playing themselves, participants assume the opposing role. The participants in this method of research play reversed roles in an interaction. Depending on the expected nature of the exchange or intended data to be gathered, a few participants are given the script in advance and a few are asked to either play themselves or specific roles based on instructions. The different scripts that the participants play out can be designed, as different scenarios where the participants are immersed in those scenarios to understand how each one would react in specific situations. After each Role Reversal exercise, the participants including the researchers reflect on the conversation and play out the other scenarios or re-play the same scenario with changes to gauge whether changes can alter the experiences of the participants. A variation of this exercise involves re-playing the same scenario with different participants or, changing the character profiles of the participants to understand how different users would act in the same situation.
Role Reversal is applicable in different kind of situations,
Just like role-play, Role Reversal is difficult to design and can prove to be a helpful method in figuring out user needs, expectations, competencies, and acceptance as well as instill a feeling of empathy among different roles for one another. The users can also feel more involved in the design process making this a user-centered approach.
Role Reversal can be of two types – physical or in-person and online.
| Method | Purpose | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Physical/In-person Role Reversal |
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| Online Role Reversal |
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Role Reversal i.e. looking at things from someone else’s perspective allows the participant to understand that someone’s needs, challenges, and expectations much better than just observing or probing them.
Role Reversal is very effective in managing change.
The quality of insights that can be drawn from Role Reversal sessions is in-depth and rich.
Role Reversal allows or expands the participants to reflect and further deepen the takeaways from a session.
The design or planning of the Role Reversal activity and the actual Role Reversal are more time and cost consuming than a few other methods such as brainstorming and focus groups as well as more exhausting.
An experienced researcher will add more value to a Role Reversal activity.
Like role-play and informance, Role Reversal reflections depend on the performances of the participants of the activity. This may also bias researchers toward better performers than average ones.
Some users may not be comfortable with someone else playing their role and so Role Reversals must be performed with a certain level of sensitivity.
Role Reversal is a version or role-play where the designer/ researcher consciously plays roles that contrast with each other, in order to evaluate an idea, concept or design from two endpoints. By employing this method, we can potentially look for conflicts in the proposition and creatively resolve any conflicts. Say for example, we are working on a social media application that promises to hugely benefit its users. On the other side of the story is the business stakeholder, who would benefit from its revenue model. The researcher/ designer then assumes two roles: A user who is interested in his/ her interests and a Business owner who seeks to monetize… there are situations these two interests conflict with each other and playing these roles could help designer/ research identify those conflicts and resolve them through design.
