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The consumers' response to product design: A narrative review
Ergonomics
Abstract
This paper reviews the research ideas around consumer response to product design. From the product side, we discuss the most significant design features preferred by average consumers, such as aesthetics and utility. And from the consumer side, we investigate the human factors influencing consumer perceptions. We present the main approaches used to measure the consumer response to product design and summarize the multiple biases that occur during the evaluation. Finally, we present in detail the most commonly used methods to analyze consumer response data and their roles in the design evaluation context.
Supplementary resource (1)
... Furthermore, Antinori et al. [10] reported findings suggesting that individuals high in openness exhibit heightened involvement with aesthetic stimuli. In another review, Benaissa et al. [11] systematically assessed the primary parameters influencing design evaluation, considering both perspectives: that of the design creators and that of the consumers. ...
... The findings from the design perception analysis demonstrate that the design sense within each cluster exhibits notable similarity, and there are no significant distinctions observed between the clusters, as shown in Figure 3. However, upon examining the standard deviation, shown in Figure 4, we observed a noteworthy difference among the clusters consistent with research findings [11]. This suggests that individuals within the same cluster tend to have different degrees of disagreement on a particular design perception. ...
... Conversely, cluster 3, characterized by low openness to experience and conservative indi- The findings from the design perception analysis demonstrate that the design sense within each cluster exhibits notable similarity, and there are no significant distinctions observed between the clusters, as shown in Figure 3. However, upon examining the standard deviation, shown in Figure 4, we observed a noteworthy difference among the clusters consistent with research findings [11]. This suggests that individuals within the same cluster tend to have different degrees of disagreement on a particular design perception. ...
This paper presents a novel approach for individual design perception modeling using the YUKI algorithm-trained Fuzzy Inference System. The study focuses on understanding how individuals perceive design based on personality traits, particularly openness to experience, using the YUKI algorithm and Fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm. The approach generates several Sugeno-type Fuzzy Inference System models to predict design perception, to minimize the Root Mean Squared Error between the model prediction and the actual design perception of participants. The results demonstrate that the suggested method offers more accurate predictions compared to the traditional Fuzzy C-means Fuzzy Inference System and Deep Artificial Neural Networks, and the Root Mean Square deviation for individual design perceptions falls within a satisfactory range of 0.84 to 1.32. The YUKI algorithm-trained Fuzzy Inference System proves effective in clustering individuals based on their level of openness, providing insights into how personality traits influence design perception.
... In another review. Benaissa et al. [12] systematically assessed the primary determinants influencing design evaluation, considering both perspectives: that of the design creators and that of the consumers. ...
... The findings from the design perception analysis demonstrate that the design sense within each cluster exhibits notable similarity, and there are no significant distinctions observed between the clusters, as shown in Figure However, upon examining the standard deviation, shown in Figure 4, we observe a noteworthy difference among the clusters consistent with research findings [12]. This suggests that individuals within the same cluster tend to have different degrees of disagreement on a particular design perception. ...
... The optimal model was attained after 60 iterations, featuring five hidden layers with neuron counts of 13, 16, 17, 17, and 10, respectively. The statistical analysis of prediction errors for two different models, YUKI-FCM and Deep ANN, provides insights into the performance of each model in predicting the individual consumer 12 perception across the 12 adjectives. When comparing their mean errors, the YUKI-FCM model generally exhibits smaller mean errors, indicating a more accurate prediction for most adjectives compared to the Deep ANN model. ...
This paper presents a novel approach for individual design perception modeling using the YUKI-trained Fuzzy Inference System. The study focuses on understanding how individuals perceive design based on personality traits, particularly openness to experience. The proposed YUKI algorithm optimizes the FCM clustering algorithm, enhancing its ability to handle uncertain and imprecise data. The YUKI-trained FIS generates several Sugeno-type FIS models to predict design perception, to minimize the Root Mean Squared Error between the model prediction and the actual design perception of participants. The results demonstrate that the YUKI-trained FIS offers more accurate predictions compared to the traditional FCM-trained FIS, and the RMSE values for individual design perceptions fall within a satisfactory range of 0.84 to 1.32. The YUKI-trained FIS proves effective in clustering individuals based on their level of openness, providing insights into how personality traits influence design perception.
... The design values and product features that this study focuses on are other limitations. A product consists of functional, aesthetics and symbolic values (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Creusen & Schoormans, 2005;Eisenman, 2013;Homburg et al., 2015;Noble & Kumar, 2010;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004). Although product designs' functional and symbolic values are effective on consumers' product purchasing (Baxter, 2018;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Crilly et al., 2004;Homburg et al., 2015;Norman, 2004;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004), this study concentrated on solely the aesthetic design factors (values). ...
... On the one hand, several researchers have defined the design factors that affect consumers' attitudes towards products as hedonic and utilitarian (pragmatic) factors (Babin et al., 1994;Batra & Ahtola, 1991;Chitturi et al., 2008;Dhar & Wertenbroch, 2000;Voss et al., 2003). On the other hand, numerous researchers have defined the design factors that affect consumers' response to products as aesthetics, utility and symbolic concepts (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Creusen & Schoormans, 2005;Eisenman, 2013;Homburg et al., 2015;Noble & Kumar, 2010;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004). Holbrook (1980) defined the consumer aesthetic as "the study of the buyer's cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses to media, entertainment, and the arts" and mentioned the aesthetic value as the diffuse feeling of pleasure while seeing the product without using it. ...
... Because of the positive correlation between product aesthetics and purchase intention, consumers' aesthetic appreciation is essential for companies (Li & Li, 2022). According to Berlyne's (1974) theory, people have similar emotional processes while valuing aesthetics (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022). After the emergence of this theory (Berlyne, 1974), several researchers focused on this topic. ...
The market share of small household appliances has grown tremendously in recent years. Varied innovation methods are applied in developing small household appliances, including Turkish Coffee Makers; however, Kansei Engineering has not yet been carried out in this field. This paper aims to conduct Kansei Engineering methodology on these machines to provide design inputs for industrial designers. The domain of the study is Turkish Coffee Makers with one pot and without a water tank, and the target is between 20–40 aged Turkish people. 382 participants attended the study, and 16 stimuli were utilised. The study methods are extracting Kansei words, selecting product properties, affinity diagram, SD Questionnaire, factor, descriptive, and PLS analyses. The results suggest that designers can generate Turkish Coffee Makers with Square with fillet as the top view, Trapezoid as the front view, C-shape cornered as the right view, and two colours as the main body colour; and design these products depending on the design factors of stylish, easy to use, joyful, trend follower, functional, desirable, youthful, dissimilar, and luxurious to succeed in the market. As a result, product designers might determine the product properties more efficiently via the findings of this study.
... The design values and product features that this study focuses on are other limitations. A product consists of functional, aesthetics and symbolic values (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Creusen & Schoormans, 2005;Eisenman, 2013;Homburg et al., 2015;Noble & Kumar, 2010;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004). Although product designs' functional and symbolic values are effective on consumers' product purchasing (Baxter, 2018;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Crilly et al., 2004;Homburg et al., 2015;Norman, 2004;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004), this study concentrated on solely the aesthetic design factors (values). ...
... On the one hand, several researchers have defined the design factors that affect consumers' attitudes towards products as hedonic and utilitarian (pragmatic) factors (Babin et al., 1994;Batra & Ahtola, 1991;Chitturi et al., 2008;Dhar & Wertenbroch, 2000;Voss et al., 2003). On the other hand, numerous researchers have defined the design factors that affect consumers' response to products as aesthetics, utility and symbolic concepts (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022;Brunner et al., 2016;Candi et al., 2017;Creusen & Schoormans, 2005;Eisenman, 2013;Homburg et al., 2015;Noble & Kumar, 2010;Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004). Holbrook (1980) defined the consumer aesthetic as "the study of the buyer's cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses to media, entertainment, and the arts" and mentioned the aesthetic value as the diffuse feeling of pleasure while seeing the product without using it. ...
... Because of the positive correlation between product aesthetics and purchase intention, consumers' aesthetic appreciation is essential for companies (Li & Li, 2022). According to Berlyne's (1974) theory, people have similar emotional processes while valuing aesthetics (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022). After the emergence of this theory (Berlyne, 1974), several researchers focused on this topic. ...
Turkish Coffee Maker is a well-known product that was invented and first manufactured in Turkey. Although it is a novel product, there is a huge demand for these machines as well as competition among the manufacturers. These companies are already implementing many innovation strategies. However, the study aims to carry out a computer-aided innovation method named Kansei Engineering in the Turkish Coffee Maker domain. Furthermore, many sub-methods were conducted in this research. These are extracting Kansei words, selecting specimens, choosing product properties, conducting affinity diagrams, SD Surveys, Factor, QT1, Descriptive and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis. In total, 257 Turkish people have participated in the study. It is expected that the findings will be beneficial for design experts who are redesigning Turkish Coffee Maker.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1001108
... A product is a combination of functional, aesthetics, and symbolic values (Benaissa and Kobayashi, 2022). However, this research particularly concentrates on functional and aesthetic criteria regarding smart jewelries because distinguished jewelries are always the ones blended by design and technology (Zhang, 2021). ...
... As per these dimensions, material, which is the matter from which a product is made, can represent a specific meaning, and so it is utilized by designers to communicate the characteristics of the product (Piselli et al., 2018). The shape is the geometric form of smart jewelry, including rounded, rectangular, or square forms (Benaissa and Kobayashi, 2022). Color refers to color options used in materials and gems of smart jewelries (Huang and Cui, 2021). ...
As an extension of wearable technology devices, smart jewelry has grasped the attention of women looking for both stylish and smart devices. Though smart jewelry is designed for women desiring to use wearable technologies without sacrificing their style, extant studies on smart jewelry lack a women-centered approach. Moreover, in the face of accelerated race in the launch of new smart jewelry in the marketplace, current approaches in the relevant literature on determining key evaluation criteria regarding smart jewelry and selecting the best alternative for women remain incapable. In this research, therefore, three main criteria, including jewelry-related, technology-related, and producer-related criteria, are initially determined, and seventeen sub-criteria are identified based on a review of relevant literature and experts~ opinions and knowledge. Then, four smart jewelry alternatives, including Bellabeat-Ivy Health Tracker, Totwoo We Bloom Smart Bracelet, Ringly Luxe Smart Bracelet, and Ringly Go Smart Bracelet, are chosen for analysis due to their technology and aesthetic design. Unlike prevailing studies, this study adopts the base-criterion method (BCM) and measurement of alternatives and ranking according to the compromise solution (MARCOS) with fuzzy ZE-numbers. The findings reveal that technology-related criteria are the most prioritized criteria by women. Further, activity tracking, price, and mobile alert are the first three critical sub-criteria in smart jewelry preference. Based on the overall evaluation, Ringly Luxe Smart Bracelet is the best smart jewelry for women. This research strongly contributes to extant literature as follows: (i) It provides a practical contribution to women in their smart jewelry selection processes and guides industrial practitioners, including smart jewelry designers and producers, in their design of smart jewelries that better satisfies the technological and aesthetic needs of women, and (ii) in terms of methodology, the proposed framework allows for the consideration of the degree of reliability of two different groups of decision-makers and experts for the decision-making process.
... Research studies related to consumer perception of a product design suggested that we adopted a unified position in product aesthetics appreciation; thus, consumers from different backgrounds can perceive modern design similarly [2]. It was found that consumer basic profile like gender and age, is not significant in aesthetic perception; however, consumer personality, namely the aspect of openness to experiences, correlates with perception variation of aesthetic design [3]- [5]. ...
... In a consumer modelling problem, an individual can be represented by multiple variables such as age, gender, work, etc. However, in our research review [5], we found that, when it comes to product design evaluation, only a few parameters have an observable connection with the aesthetic evaluation of a design. Namely, the personality aspect of openness, prior exposure to similar designs, and mood at the moment of evaluation. ...
Product recommendation systems have been instrumental in online commerce since the early days. Their development is expanded further with the help of big data and advanced deep learning methods, where consumer profiling is central. The interest of the consumer can now be predicted based on the personal past choices and the choices of similar consumers. However, what is currently defined as a choice is based on quantifiable data, like product features, cost, and type. This paper investigates the possibility of profiling customers based on the preferred product design and wanted affects. We considered the case of vase design, where we study individual Kansei of each design. The personal aspects of the consumer considered in this study were decided based on our literature review conclusions on the consumer response to product design. We build a representative consumer model that constitutes the recommendation system's core using deep learning. It asks the new consumers to provide what affect they are looking for, through Kansei adjectives, and recommend; as a result, the aesthetic design that will most likely cause that affect.
... Most of the change has happened in the segment of materiality or overall aesthetics in the sense of look and feel. There have been some ideas of an adjustable heel but that is about it [10] [1]. ...
This paper aims to understand the relation between form, function, aesthetics and ergonomics. It looks at a singular product (that of a high heeled shoe) through the lens of historical evolution, ergonomics, aesthetics and tries to examine the causes of prevalence over centuries and how these causes can underline the basic necessities that a product design must fulfill to transcend over time. It also tries to question the importance of aesthetics over comfort/functionality as this case study proves to be an example of usage despite discomfort.
... The aesthetic appeal of digital healthcare touchpoints in mass media has financial consequences for companies, hospitals, and health policies. Aesthetically pleasing healthcare devices sharing their look online increase the number of searches and increase subsequent paid social mentions, favoring products during an early stage of growth due to the added brand value [9,10]. ...
This paper examines the importance of aesthetics in the design of medical devices, examining how aesthetic considerations contribute to improved usability, patient acceptance, and emotional well-being. Medical device manufacturers have increasingly integrated aesthetic elements that go beyond functionality to foster a personal connection between devices and users. The incorporation of aesthetic design promotes psychological comfort, enhances trust, and facilitates a sense of satisfaction, particularly in devices intended for long-term use. By analyzing various case studies and examining current methods of quantifying aesthetic factors in medical devices, this study reveals the implications of aesthetics on device effectiveness and user compliance. The paper argues that while aesthetic value in medical devices is subjective, its impact on user experience and operational success is substantial. Finally, challenges related to regulatory standards, cultural diversity, and the balance between form and function are discussed, underscoring the need for an interdisciplinary approach to creating aesthetically mindful medical devices.
... Several studies have identified specific design elements that influence consumer response, including aesthetics, utility, and symbolic concepts (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2022;Brunner et al. 2016;Candi et al. 2017;Creusen & Schoormans, 2005;Eisenman, 2013;Homburg et al, 2015;Noble & Kumar, 2010;Rafaeli & VilnaiYavetz, 2004).Holbrook (1980) defined consumer aesthetics as the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses of buyers to media, entertainment, and art, and defined aesthetic value as the overall pleasantness that a product brings. Kumar and Noble (2016) also argue that the aesthetic value of product design lies in its visual appeal and pleasure. ...
... Beberapa tahun terakhir, industri kemasan masih menjadi penggerak peningkatan penjualan. Produk yang dikemas dengan lebih baik akan memperkuat posisi tawar (Benaissa & Kobayashi, 2023). Kemasan produk juga digunakan sebagai pembeda dari produk serupa. ...
This activity is to assist New Entrepreneurial MSMEs entering Semester 2 under the auspices of the Sidoarjo Regency Cooperatives and UMKM (Dinkop & UMKM) Service. Training uses the Technical Guidance (Bimtek) model for 5 (five) days. Participants consisted of 100 WUBs throughout Sidoarjo Regency who were engaged in the Food and Beverage (F&B) sector. The method used in this technical guidance uses 5 (five) stages consisting of user research, prototype design, design trials, packaging design and cost efficiency, as well as implementation and evaluation. The indicator for the success of this activity uses before and after measurements using a scale of 0–100 percent. Technical guidance participants are given tests before and after training to determine their progress in absorbing the material. The results of the Technical Guidance evaluation show an average increase in participant competency of 40% starting from user research to design implementation. Based on the results of the learning evaluation and participant enthusiasm, this activity can be continued with further Technical Guidance to strengthen the competence of business actors who are members of WUB under the auspices of Dinkop & UMKM. Apart from that, the reach of participants can be widened to the entire East Java region.
Purpose
Market evaluation of products is the basis for product innovation, yet traditional expert-based evaluation methods are highly dependent on the specialization of experts. There exist a lot of weak expert-generated texts on the Internet of their own subjective evaluations of products. Analyzing these texts can indirectly extract the opinions of weak experts and transform them into decision-support information that assists product designers in understanding the market.
Design/methodology/approach
In social networks, a subset of users, termed “weak experts”, possess specialized knowledge and frequently share their product experiences online. This study introduces a comparative opinion mining framework that leverages the insights of “weak experts” to analyze user opinions.
Findings
An automotive product case study demonstrates that evaluations based on weak expert insights offer managerial insights with a 99.4% improvement in timeliness over traditional expert analyses. Furthermore, in the few-shot sentiment analysis module, with only 10% of the sample, the precision loss is just 1.59%. In addition, the quantitative module of specialization weighting balances low-specialization expert opinions and boosts the weight of high-specialization weak expert views. This new framework offers a valuable tool for companies in product innovation and market strategy development.
Originality/value
This study introduces a novel approach to opinion mining by focusing on the underutilized insights of weak experts. It combines few-shot sentiment analysis with specialization weighting and AHP, offering a comprehensive and efficient tool for product evaluation and market analysis.
Objectives. To explore the demand for fitness furniture and the feasibility of its fitness function in the context of the current adaptation of home fitness equipment to the home environment.
Methods. Taking the growing demand for home fitness as the background, the problems of current home fitness equipment and home environment are analysed, the design path of fitness furniture is explored, and the fitness armchair is used as an example for design practice and Finite element analysis (FEA) simulation verification.
Results. The design is based on the human movement during fitness, the user's usage and emotional needs and the characteristics of the home environment and domestic space, as well as a combination of design factors such as shape, functionality, safety, versatility and ergonomics. We have designed fitness furniture that meets the needs of fitness and fits into the home environment.
Conclusion. The design of home fitness furniture must take into account the unity between the user, the fitness furniture and the home environment in order to facilitate comfortable and safe fitness activities in the home and to create a harmonious home environment.
Additive manufacturing (AM) has an affinity with topology optimization to think of various designs with complex structures. Hence, this paper aims to optimize the design of a lattice-structured heat sink, which can be manufactured by AM. The design objectives are to maximize the thermal performance of convective heat transfer in natural convection simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and to minimize the material cost required for AM process at the same time. The lattice structure is represented as a node/edge system via graph theory with a moderate number of design variables. Bayesian optimization, which employs the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II and the Kriging surrogate model, is conducted to search for better designs with the minimum CFD cost. The present topology optimization successfully finds better lattice-structured heat sink designs than a reference fin-structured design regarding thermal performance and material cost. Also, several optimized lattice-structured designs outperform reference pin-fin-structured designs regarding thermal performance though the pin-fin structure is still advantageous for a material cost-oriented design. This paper also discusses the flow mechanism observed in the heat sink to explain how the optimized heat sink structure satisfies the competing design objectives simultaneously.
Individual products and models on the market must be specifically differentiated from the rest to meet user demand. In terms of consumer purchasing behaviour, consumers increasingly base their decisions on subjective terms or the impression that the product leaves on them, both in terms of functionality, usability, safety, and price adequacy, and regarding the emotions and feelings that it triggers in them. This demand has lead both Asia and Europe to implement new methodologies to develop new products, such as "emotional design" or Kansei engineering. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on the most relevant methodologies based on Kansei engineering and their relevant results in the specific discipline of product design, addressing these five questions: (RQ1) How many studies on KE and emotional design are there in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases from 1995 to February 2021? (RQ2) Which research topics and types of KE are addressed? (RQ3) Who is leading the research on KE and emotional design? (RQ4) What are the benefits and drawbacks of using and applying the methodology? (RQ5) What are the limitations of the current research? We analysed 87 studies focusing on the Kansei methodology used for product design and device technologies (e.g., shape design, actuators, sensors, structure) and aesthetic aspects (e.g., Kansei words selection, the quantification of measured emotions of results, and detected shortcomings), and provided the database with all the collected information. One identified and highlighted sector in the results is the electronic-technological-device sector. Results confirm that this type of methodology has a majority and direct application in these sectors, and they are widely represented in the automotive and electronics industries. Lastly, this SLR provides researchers with a guide for comparative emotional-design work, and facilitates future designers who want to implement emotional design in their work by selecting the specific type according to the results of the SLR.
The aim of this work is to determine how personal intrinsic factors towards a design problem are related to novelty and circularity. A deeper understanding of this relationship will be a valuable aid when it comes to making an adequate selection of design teams. The factors studied are the level of the designer's motivation, relevance, knowledge and affinity with regard to the design problem. To this end, a study was conducted with 35 novice designers, organised in groups of between two and five members. Each group had to propose a conceptual solution to two different design problems. Novelty was assessed using the SAPPhIRE causality model (which stands for State–Action–Part–Phenomenon–Input–oRgan–Effect) and the Circular Economy Toolkit was applied to measure circularity. The results show that as motivation, level of knowledge, perception of relevance and affinity for the problem increase, the solution displays greater novelty and less circularity, although for circularity, the difference is not statistically significant.
Purpose: Based on the Nippon Color & Design (NCD) system, this study aims to accurately discover the color preferences and image positioning of different female groups in China and, thus, to establish a color reference system, which is suitable for the packaging of beauty products.
Methods: We first selected middle-aged women in the rural area of northern China as the studied group. Then, we conducted an extensive questionnaire survey on their color preferences focusing on their psychological characteristics and perception rules of emotional needs for colors. After that, we extracted colors from samples and classified them using the NCD system research method. Finally, we conducted a systematic analysis and verification to determine the color emotional preference of this group.
Conclusion: We investigate the color preference of targeted customers to establish the image space of beauty product packaging. By applying SPSS for the factor analysis, we study the rural women in northern China, who are less concerned about fashion. We focus on the accurate positioning between the interaction of color, women, and environment throughout the color design process. We have conducted a series of comparative analyses of popular beauty products among the rural women. The results can accurately reflect the brand definition and positioning of color semantics and, thus, provide invaluable information for future beauty packaging designs and marketing promotion strategy.
Currently, evaluations of products from aesthetics are mostly carried out with knowledge expressions of aesthetic features as tools, achieving remarkable results. However, obtaining a large aesthetic feature vocabulary is a challenge because of the experience of researchers and the comprehension abilities of subjects. In addition, due to manual feature extraction, the sample sizes of experimental dataset are generally small, leading to results with poor generalization. To address this problem, a method of aesthetic evaluation and form design for products based on deep learning was proposed. First, a crawler tool was used to collect the front images of cars with corresponding appearance ratings, and a dataset was constructed with users’ intuitive and simple ratings as the labels. A deep convolutional neural network (CNN) was designed, and a grading threshold was used as the classification basis. During the process of training the network, batch normalization and other methods were used to optimize the network, and good classification effects were achieved. Based on the above work, an adversarial neural network was used for the aesthetic design of a product form, a shape sketch of an automobile front face was generated, the proposed evaluation model was used to evaluate it, and the result obtained was excellent. These results show that the method used in this study can correctly evaluate product form aesthetics and then generate a design scheme with a high aesthetic level, thereby providing powerful technical support for the intelligent design of product forms.
Design aesthetics play a crucial role in product design. Stakeholders expect to develop highly valuable premium products by improving the design aesthetics of products. Nevertheless, the question of how to evaluate the value of design aesthetics has not been fully addressed. In this study, the effects of design aesthetics on the evaluation of the value of a product were investigated through a strictly controlled experiment in which the neural responses of the participants were measured. Forty participants completed the design aesthetics experiment in a laboratory setting. Images of products were divided into two categories: those representing high– and low–design-aesthetic stimuli. Both types of images were labeled with the same price. Overall, the images representing high design aesthetics elicited smaller N100 and lower P200 amplitudes than did the images representing low design aesthetics. This finding indicates that low design aesthetics attracted more attention than high design aesthetics did and that high design aesthetics triggered positive emotions. Low–design-aesthetic products elicited a larger N400 amplitude. This finding reveals the inconsistency between labeled and expected prices. The present study indicates that the N400 component can be used as an indicator for measuring the perceived value of a product in a future product design study. Our study provides event-related potential indicators that can be easily applied in decision making for measuring the perceived value of a product’s design.
Purpose
Customization by segmenting within human–computer interaction is an emerging phenomenon. Appealing graphical elements that cater to user needs are considered progressively important, as the way a graphic is visually represented can greatly contribute to the interaction. However, aesthetic perceptions are subjective and may differ by target group. Understanding variations in user perceptions may aid in design processes; therefore, we set out to investigate the effects of demographic differences relating to perceptions of graphical user interface (GUI) element (i.e. game app icon) aesthetics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employed a vignette experiment with random participant ( n = 513) assignment to evaluate 4 icons from a total of 68 pre-selected mobile game icons using semantic differential scales. This resulted in a total of 2052 individual icon evaluations. Regression analyses were performed with the effects of age, gender and time using graphical user interfaces (i.e. app stores) and the interactions of these variables relating to perceptions of GUI element aesthetics.
Findings
The results indicate that, overall, demographic factors have relatively little effect on how icons are perceived. Significant relations suggest that experienced users, younger audiences and women are more critical in their perception of aesthetic excellence, and that perceptions change for younger women. The implications of the findings are discussed via adaptive decision-making theory.
Originality/value
In the context of graphical user interface element aesthetics, demographic differences have received minimal attention as moderating variables regardless of their relevance in design and development. Hence, it merits further research.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) facilitates product personalization and iterative design, which makes it an ideal technology for ergonomic product development. In this study, a systematic review was conducted of the literature regarding the use of AM in ergonomic-product design, and methodological aspects of the studies were analyzed. A literature search was performed using the keywords “3D print*,” “additive manufacturing,” “ergonomic*” and “human factors”. Included were studies reporting the use of AM specifically in ergonomic design of products/prototypes including the detailing of an ergonomic testing methodology used for evaluation. Forty studies were identified pertaining to the fields of medicine, assistive technology, wearable technology, hand tools, testing devices and others. The most commonly used technology was fused deposition modeling with polylactic acid, but the overall preferred material was acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Various combinations of objective/subjective and qualitative/quantitative product evaluation methods were used. Based on the findings, recommendations were developed to facilitate the choice of most suitable AM technologies and materials for specific applications in ergonomics.
For years the HCI community’s research has been focused on the hearing and sight senses. However, in recent times, there has been an increased interest in using other types of senses, such as smell or touch. Moreover, this has been accompanied with growing research related to sensory substitution techniques and multi-sensory systems. Similarly, contemporary art has also been influenced by this trend and the number of artists interested in creating novel multi-sensory works of art has increased substantially. As a result, the opportunities for visually impaired people to experience artworks in different ways are also expanding. In spite of all this, the research focusing on multimodal systems for experiencing visual arts is not large and user tests comparing different modalities and senses, particularly in the field of art, are insufficient. This paper attempts to design a multi-sensory mapping to convey color to visually impaired people employing musical sounds and temperature cues. Through user tests and surveys with a total of 18 participants, we show that this multi-sensory system is properly designed to allow the user to distinguish and experience a total of 24 colors. The tests consist of several semantic correlational adjective-based surveys for comparing the different modalities to find out the best way to express colors through musical sounds and temperature cues based on previously well-established sound-color and temperature-color coding algorithms. In addition, the resulting final algorithm is also tested with 12 more users.
One becomes accustomed to repeated exposures, even for a novel event. In the present study, we investigated how predictability affects habituation to novelty by applying a mathematical model of arousal that we previously developed, and through the use of psychophysiological experiments to test the model’s prediction. We formalized habituation to novelty as a decrement in Kullback-Leibler divergence from Bayesian prior to posterior (i.e., information gain) representing arousal evoked from a novel event through Bayesian update. The model predicted an interaction effect between initial uncertainty and initial prediction error (i.e., predictability) on habituation to novelty: the greater the initial uncertainty, the faster the decrease in information gain (i.e., the sooner habituation occurs). This prediction was supported by experimental results using subjective reports of surprise and event-related potential (P300) evoked by visual-auditory incongruity. Our findings suggest that in highly uncertain situations, repeated exposure to stimuli can enhance habituation to novel stimuli.
Fierce competition in the global market forces companies to satisfy all aspects of customers’ needs during the product design stage. Among the customers’ needs, affective needs are difficult to satisfy since understanding the affective needs of customers is a challenging task. Therefore, Kansei Engineering (KE), which is capable of transforming the affective needs of customers into product design form elements, has been widely used in literature. In KE, there are two types of systems: Forward KE and Backward KE. In the forward KE, Kansei words are inputs of the system and product design form elements are outputs of the system, while the product design form elements are inputs and Kansei words are outputs of the system in the backward KE. In this study, fuzzy linguistic summarization is proposed to extract fuzzy rules in the form of “if–then” rules that associate customers’ affective needs into product design form elements for both backward and forward KE. The brute force approach and genetic algorithm (GA) are used to obtain the most useful linguistic summaries supported by enough data, efficiently. Furthermore, fuzzy association rule mining using the Apriori algorithm is employed to compare the obtained results of fuzzy linguistic summarization. A case study is conducted on cradle design to illustrate the applicability of the proposed fuzzy linguistic summarization and the fuzzy association rule mining. Even though the brute force approach is the best option to generate linguistic summaries, it could not be efficiently used in the design of complex products since its time complexity is exponential; and therefore, GA could be used to generate linguistic summaries in an efficient way when time complexity of the approaches is compared. The results show that fuzzy linguistic summarization is an effective and powerful tool to capture the affective needs of customers.
Traditional user research methods are challenged for the decision-making in product design and improvement with the updating speed becoming faster, considering limited survey scopes, insufficient samples, and time-consuming processes. This paper proposes a novel approach to acquire useful online reviews from E-commerce platforms, build a product evaluation indicator system, and put forward improvement strategies for the product with opinion mining and sentiment analysis with online reviews. The effectiveness of the method is validated by a large number of user reviews for smartphones wherein, with the evaluation indicator system, we can accurately predict the bad review rate for the product with only 9.9% error. And improvement strategies are proposed after processing the whole approach in the case study. The approach can be applied for product evaluation and improvement, especially for the products with needs for iterative design and sailed online with plenty of user reviews.
Culture plays an essential role in the success of product design, especially in the age of a global economy where there is a high probability of discrepancy between the designer's intention and the consumer's response. However, the role of culture is often challenging to identify and measure. In the current paper, we employed Repertory Grids to investigate differences in UK and Chinese participants' evaluations of designs, which were themselves from both UK and Chinese students. The techniques of Honey's Content Analysis and Principal Components Analysis were applied to integrate the analysis of both the collected qualitative and quantitative data. The results show that the two groups tended to focus on a similar range of design aspects (i.e. aesthetics, form/shape, usability, creativity, and functionality), but apply different criteria in evaluating such aspects.The UK and Chinese designs were found to be distinctive from each other and tended to appeal more to the people from the same cultural background. The findings reveal the interplay between culture and design and underline the importance of integrating culture into design education.
Most colour studies focus on single colour effects; however, interiors are multi‐coloured environments and contemporary users are looking for more innovative colour schemes in interiors. Interior architects rely on their own subjective experience and instincts when they take up the challenge. This study aims to reveal colour semantics of paired colours on walls for different residential interior types (eg, living room) as a second part of the previous study conducted by the same authors. Both studies explore colour semantics through 42 Munsell colours (with variety of hues, value, and chroma levels) with 14 adjectives (eg, beautiful, unpleasant, cold) under controlled conditions. The predecessor study had explored single colour meanings, however, in this study, participants were asked to pair colours for the same residential interior types on the same semantic scales. Thus, its results can be compared to single colour data on different residential interior types through same methodology and participants. Results reveal that all colour attributes affect semantics paired wall colours. Orange is associated with negative meanings more whereas yellow hue induces positive meanings more for all adjective pairs, except cold‐warm and feminine‐masculine. For positive association, lighter colours and less saturated colours are selected more compared to saturated and darker colours. Comparing results of single colour study and the current study reveals that pairs cannot be anticipated through single colours for all residential interior types and adjectives, and positive adjectives tend to require different colours than their single associations in their pairs.
Having an accurate understanding of the individual’s Kansei needs and afterwards designing products that match these needs are particularly important in the era of mass personalisation. Although customers’ Kansei needs have been addressed by Kansei engineering, difculties remain in handling the diferences of individual Kansei. In this paper, individual Kansei variance is considered to transform the Kansei words into multisensory design elements, to help designers better understand the individual’s Kansei needs. First, a fuzzy cognitive model is proposed to identify the individual Kansei diferences in Kansei words by taking customers’ characteristics and purchasing motives into consideration. Second, a fuzzy cognitive model-based mapping method is proposed to interpret Kansei words into multisensory design elements. The method incorporates a fuzzy clustering method and basic-emotion systems to identify Kansei variance and to determine design elements’ membership of Kansei words dynamically. Finally, the prototype application of the proposed method on a compact SUV is illustrated. The results suggest that individual diferences in Kansei terms do exist among customers in the same market segment, and
the proposed method has good feasibility and practicability in handling individual Kansei diferences in emotional design. Those Kansei dimensions that are more prominent in individual Kansei variance are highly recommended for further digging, which would beneft carrying out personalised customisation and diferentiated design.
Understanding consumer cognitive and affective needs is a complex and tricky challenge for consumer studies. Creating and defining product attributes that meet the consumers' personal wishes and needs in different contexts is a challenge that demands new perspectives because there are mismatches between the objective of companies and the consumer's objective, which indicates the need for products to become increasingly consumer-oriented. Product design approaches aim to bring the product and consumer closer together. The objective of this study is to investigate the application of the cognitive and affective needs of the consumer in product design through a systematic review of the literature of publications carried out in the last 20 years. This article selects research carried out in the specific area of cognitive and affective product design and defines the state of the art of the main areas, challenges, and trends. The conclusion that was reached is that cognitive approaches have been updated, are more associated with technology, and so are focused and oriented toward the ease and friendliness of the product. In contrast, affective approaches are older and focus on the quality of life, satisfaction, pleasure, and friendliness of the product. This review indicates that the emotional focus of change for cognitive complexity is due to an understanding of the affective and emotional subjectivity of the consumers and how they can translate these requirements into product attributes. These approaches seem to lose their strength or preference in the areas of design and engineering for more rational and logical cognitive applications, and therefore are more statistically verifiable. Advances in neuroscience are focused on applications in marketing and consumer psychology and some cognitive and affective product designs.
The previous study on design for disabled people has indicates that product development for trans-radial amputees should integrate designer’s reflection in identifying significant variables such as the real needs of their users, functionality, ergonomic aspect, and aesthetic. Hence, this paper intends to re-assess the design needs of trans-radial amputees through an observation study with 15 trans-radial amputees (right side). The observation aims to understand the difficulties that occurred in the daily activities of amputees, in their home situation without the help of prosthesis. The result of the study suggests the amputees’ main struggle in their daily activities; preparing meals and eating independently. Therefore, a few design criteria have been proposed, and the prototype design was successfully developed as a proposal for potential future development and production. It is hoped the outcome of this research help to surpass the kind of device constrained to help amputees preparing meals and eating independently.
Keywords: product design, design thinking, design for disabled people
The present research builds upon the touch literature to show that the salience of haptic product attributes related to product surface texture (smooth, rough) and weight (light weight, heavy weight) influence consumer product impressions. We propose that haptic cue congruity across texture and weight drive consumer product impressions depending on a consumer's need for touch (NFT). We show that high autotelic‐NFT consumers who touch for sensory pleasure enjoyed the incongruity between smooth texture and heavy weight haptic cues, and consequently showed favorable evaluations towards exciting brands. In contrast, low autotelic‐NFT consumers prefer the anticipated match between smooth texture and light weight haptic cues, which conformed to their expectation about the nature of a sophisticated brand personality. Further, we show how the interactive effect of haptic attributes and a consumer's autotelic‐NFT on willingness to purchase is mediated by product personality. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
A visual aesthetic is a crucial determinant of product design evaluation. Through the analysis of image features, not only can we evaluate the aesthetic level, but also we can reveal the whole quality of the design proposal. We assume that it could be a potential pattern to predict the ultimate success of the proposal in product design that a visual aesthetic can be a cue for award classification modeling. Consequently, we conduct investigation on a dataset of over 10,003 design submissions in a design competition held once a year from 2008 to 2018 in order to manifest the assumption. Due to the remarkable performance of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), we compare seven deep learning methods to explore an optimal model for design award prediction based on product image analysis. The result of the experiments indicates that the proposed method achieves comparative accuracy in design award classification result predication, with the optimal classification accuracy of 70.79% using the SEFL-ResNet (Squeeze and Excitation – Focal Loss – ResNet) method.
We define aesthetic emotions as emotions that underlie the evaluative assessment of artworks. They are separated from the wider class of art-elicited emotions. Aesthetic emotions historically have been characterized as calm, as lacking specific patterns of embodiment, and as being a sui generis kind of pleasure. We reject those views and argue that there is a plurality of aesthetic emotions contributing to praise. After presenting a general account of the nature of emotions, we analyze twelve positive aesthetic emotions in four different categories: emotions of pleasure, contemplation, amazement, and respect. The emotions that we identify in each category, including feelings of fluency, intrigue, wonder, and adoration, have been widely neglected both within aesthetics and in emotion research more broadly.
Accurate evaluation of human aesthetic preferences represents a major challenge for creative evolutionary and generative systems research. Prior work has tended to focus on feature measures of the artefact, such as symmetry, complexity and coherence.
However, research models from psychology suggest that human aesthetic experiences encapsulate factors beyond the artefact, making accurate computational models very difficult to design. The interactive genetic algorithm circumvents the problem through human-in-the-loop, subjective evaluation of aesthetics, but is limited due to user fatigue and small population sizes. In this paper, we look at how recent advances in deep learning can assist in automating personal aesthetic judgement. Using a leading artist’s computer art dataset, we investigate the relationship between image measures, such as complexity, and human aesthetic evaluation. We use dimension reduction methods to visualise both genotype and phenotype space in order to support the exploration of new territory in a generative system. Convolutional neural networks trained on the artist’s prior aesthetic evaluations are used to suggest new possibilities similar or between known high-quality genotype-phenotype mappings. We integrate this classification and discovery system into a software tool for evolving complex generative art and design.
There is a lack of emerging methods for guiding designers in innovating cultural contents beyond superficial manifestations in the process of product design with the consideration of modern lifestyles. Grounded in metaphor theory from cognitive linguistics, this article proposes a theoretical model—as a diagrammatic tool for design practice—assisting designers and/or researchers in analyzing and integrating the elements derived from Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) into product functions meeting modern needs. A quasi-experiment was conducted to illustrate how this theoretical model was applied in two design cases, which aimed to blend the value of TCPs and modern lifestyles metaphorically. We argue that this theoretical model can assist designers and/or researchers in designing products, which can spur reflections on culture, enhance the user experience, and improve modern life with local identity through metaphorically blending of TCPs and modern lifestyles.
Symmetry is an important visual feature for humans and its application in architecture is completely evident. This paper aims to investigate the role of symmetry in the aesthetics judgment of residential building façades and study the pattern of eye movement based on the expertise of subjects in architecture. In order to implement this in the present paper, we have created images in two categories: symmetrical and asymmetrical façade images. The experiment design allows us to investigate the preference of subjects and their reaction time to decide about presented images as well as record their eye movements. It was inferred that the aesthetic experience of a building façade is influenced by the expertise of the subjects. There is a significant difference between experts and non-experts in all conditions, and symmetrical façades are in line with the taste of non-expert subjects. Moreover, the patterns of fixational eye movements indicate that the horizontal or vertical symmetry (mirror symmetry) has a profound influence on the observer’s attention, but there is a difference in the points watched and their fixation duration. Thus, although symmetry may attract the same attention during eye movements on façade images, it does not necessarily lead to the same preference between the expert and non-expert groups.
This paper introduces a holistic typology of 20 mood states that are presented with a componential approach, describing six aspects: subjective feeling, perception, reaction, tendency, liking, and disliking. In addition, each mood is illustrated with a short example narrative and a collection of four images. The typology was generated by combining the results of two studies. With a lexical analysis and researcher introspections, Study 1 examined 135 mood words, which resulted in an initial identification of mood states and corresponding verbal and pictorial descriptions. Study 2 validated and enriched these results with a phenomenological analysis of 159 introspective mood samples that were collected by a group of nine co-researchers in a two-week mood diary exercise. The mood typology provides a fine-grained overview and a vocabulary of user moods. Designers and design researchers can use these results as a foundation for systematic mood-focused design research, as a means to develop mood sensibility and granularity (i.e., the ability to distinguish between moods and the variety of mood manifestations), and as a tool to facilitate user interviews in empathy-based design processes.
The haptic properties of a product have mostly been underestimated with most studies focusing on visual aspects of objects. Nonetheless, in the last years, it has been found that tactile stimuli are in some cases even more important than the visual ones. However, the traditional paper-based surveys cannot fully and objectively examine their effects on consumers. Therefore, neuroscientific methods, which overcome these obstacles, are becoming more used but there is still only a small number of studies focusing on the effect of haptics in marketing. Using the keywords haptics, tactile input, EEG, fMRI and tactile, seven relevant studies have been found and used in this literature review, out of which four have used EEG and three fMRI. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to review the research that has been already conducted and to identify the areas in which further research should be made and the neuroscientific methods which could be used.
Novelty is an essential factor in design that is deemed attractive and creative by humans. However, an individual’s acceptance of novelty depends on their emotions. Knowledge about the range of novelty which ones accept will help to create attractive design targeting certain users. We previously developed a mathematical model of emotional dimensions associated with novelty such as arousal (i.e., surprise) and valence (i.e., positivity and negativity). The model formalized arousal as Bayesian information gain and valence as a function of the arousal based on Berlyne’s arousal potential theory. The arousal model was a function of three parameters: prediction error (the difference between expectation and reality), uncertainty (i.e., unpredictability), and external noise. In Berlyne’s model, the valence against novelty forms an inversed-U curve and turns from positive to negative when novelty is large. We assumed such a point that the sign of the valence turned showed the range of novelty ones would accept. Here, we derived a prediction error where valence turns from positive to negative. We termed this acceptable novelty and defined it as the range of novelty one can accept. Our model predicted that when the order of uncertainty is larger than external noise, the higher the uncertainty is, the larger the acceptable novelty becomes. This analysis is an update from our previous model and can be a basis of designing products to certain target users.
Aesthetics of package design is an important consideration when consumers make purchase decisions. We argue that this is particularly the case for purchase decision of products in the beauty category. This paper advances current understanding of the role of packaging in product purchase behavior by identifying heuristic cues exhibited in packaging (i.e., that beautiful packaging is more effective at making the consumer more beautiful). Across a pilot field study and four lab studies, we demonstrate that package aesthetics informs inferences of how well the product can perform, which, in turn, drives purchase decisions. Importantly, we show that in the presence of a diagnostic cue such as a brand name, or an explicit promise (e.g. tagline of an advertisement), this effect is attenuated and rendered irrelevant. Further, we show that this effect is rendered ineffective to a category to which beauty is irrelevant. Hence, by signaling product efficacy, the beauty‐in‐a‐bottle heuristic appears to inform purchase decisions.
The primary goal of human factors is to create systems that can be easily used by their intended audience, while minimizing the number of mistakes that a user might make. However, sometimes human factors principles are applied in ways that makes a user’s task harder. Sometimes this is intentional, and the designer uses human factors as justification for creating an exclusionary design. In other cases, it is unintentional, and the application of human factors was done in a haphazard or incomplete way, with the resulting design at cross-purposes with the original intent. In either case, that’s bad human factors.
Structural light weighting is vital for increasing energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. Furthermore, for many applications, high heat conductivity is necessary to attain efficient energy transfer while increasing the product stiffness and reducing the weight. In recent years, with the development of 3D printing technology, attention has been directed toward porous materials that greatly contribute to weight reduction. As such, this educational research is aiming toward introducing the methodology of concurrent multiscale topology optimization attaining designs of lightweight, high heat conductive, and stiff porous structures utilizing multi-objective optimization method. The normalized multi-objective function is used in this research to maximize heat conductivity and stiffness. Therefore, the objective criteria are consisting of heat and mechanical compliance minimization. Utilizing the SIMP method, the multiscale sensitivity analysis, and optimization formulation were driven theoretically using adjoint method to reduce the computational cost and presented in a MATLAB code. 2D cases were studied, and a proper Pareto front was attained. The results showed good coupling of the macro and microscale design. The MATLAB code is explained and included in the appendix and it is intended for educational purposes.
With the development of economic globalization, more and more product designers are faced with the need of designing for customers from different countries. However, it is a challenge for designers to efficiently develop the desired mental images of certain products for target users with different cultural backgrounds. Our research proposed a deep learning-based system to facilitate designers to gain better awareness of the cross-culture differences between different target customers. We trained a kawaii classification neural network model with the data of 1414 cosmetic packaging images annotated by 12 Japanese females separately. As a follow-up investigation, we conducted neuron analysis to compare the features of kawaii packages perceived by Japanese participants with the results from a prior study conducted with Chinese participants. The result shows that Japanese females tended to see more girlish and exquisite design features as kawaii while Chinese females perceived more childish and round elements as kawaii. A reverse experiment further verified the effectiveness of adding these different design features to enhance Chinese or Japanese females’ perception of kawaii. We also noticed that it’s hard to obtain the cross-cultural differences in customers’ perception by extracting image parameters with a set of predefined visual features as such perception differences could be subconscious. Our deep learning-based Kansei design facilitation provides a feasible solution to customized design for target customers with different cultural backgrounds.
Lightweight and high heat conductive solid structures are playing important role in various fields of engineering. To maximize the design performance for such structures, we investigated multiscale topology optimization for excessive lightweight heat-conductive porous structures and introduced a mathematical optimization model formulation for concurrently optimizing the structures (macrostructure) and the constitutive pores (microstructure). The microscale is considered a representative volume element and designed using the asymptotic homogenization method. For each iteration, the effective heat conductivity tensor of the microstructure is evaluated during the optimization process and used as the heat conductivity of the macrostructure. Sensitivity analysis on this concurrent optimization scheme was derived to address the macro and microstructure coupling. To broaden the scope of the research applicability, three topology optimization methods, i.e., SIMP, level set and ESO are investigated, and the results are compared and discussed. The suggested formulations showed a successful application of the concurrent multiscale optimization formulations and good coupling on the macro and microscale. Also, the formulations demonstrated a strong influence between the macro and the microscale of the design problem for the topology optimization methods. Increasing the design freedom by introducing various microstructures for the macro design domain showed superior performance associated with attaining high weight reduction. In addition, the concurrent optimization scheme has enabled the microstructures to attain a good spatial layout of materials while taking into account the weight reduction constraint. The spatial arrangements of the designed microstructures have achieved conducting heat in a shorter path toward the heatsink zone of macrostructure design. This allows attaining good performance with high weight reduction. Furthermore, numerical examples of different mesh numbers were used to study mesh dependency of multiscale topology optimization. The scope of the study was broadened by the inclusion of 3D case studies. Implementing Isosurface technique to achieve high detail model was also used to attain high detailed concurrently optimized design with minimal mesh number to minimize the computational cost. The 3D optimized case was investigated experimentally.
‘Modern design’ in Japan began with an encounter with the West. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the country opened up to the outside world after 200 years of isolation, it began to promote its own industrial development and, in order to catch up with the West, it focused on exporting traditional crafts and adapting them to European tastes. In the early twentieth century, Japanese design adopted European ideas of modern design and moved away from the superficial and toward the functional, rational and social. In the 1970s, when environmental and energy issues began to arise, Japanese design became recognized worldwide for its ability to reduce size and weight, and innovative product designs were introduced to the world one after another. Japan has been eager to learn from European and American design and incorporate it into its own design, and then use its own superior technological development capabilities to improve and develop it into a design with its own strengths. The Sony ‘Walkman’, for example, created a new lifestyle and was introduced to the world. Another feature of Japanese design is that it was not individuals but rather anonymous teams of designers in corporate design departments who led the way. Since its encounter with the West in the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, Japanese design has always been closely linked to industry and has contributed to its development, but in the twenty-first century, with the end of mass-production and mass-consumption, it is looking for new ways that go beyond the values of the industrial society.
This paper introduces an inverse problem for crack identification in two-dimensional structures using eXtend Finite Element Method (XFEM) associated with original Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) and improved GWO using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) (IGWO). Static analysis with different boundary conditions and experimental modal analysis of cracked plates with varying crack lengths is used to test the accuracy of IGWO compared with GWO. The objective function is based on strain vertical measured and is computed at each iteration. The obtained results indicate that the IGWO provides more accurate results than GWO based on convergence study and the error between exact and estimated results. Next, another application based on dynamic experimental cracked plates is used to improve Artificial Neural Network (ANN) parameters using GWO and IGWO. The frequency and crack length are used as input and output for vertical and horizontal cracks in plates. Thus, the model is ready for the prediction of crack length. IGWO can select the best parameters compared with GWO for better prediction compared with GWO.
Product design is at the heart of luxury brands. While prior research has focused on the antecedents of product design value perception (PDVP) or on the relationship between PDVP and brand perception, no integrated framework has been developed to bring together the PDVP antecedents and consequences for consumer–luxury brand relationships. Based on value theory and two quantitative studies (N1 = 276; N2 = 249) analyzed using a partial least squares approach, this research investigates the antecedents and consequences of PDVP, then looks at mediators and one consumer-dependent moderator, design acumen. The results show that social and individual drivers influence PDVP. The study also sheds light on the direct influence of PDVP on luxury brand love and explores how full mediation is achieved through brand identification and brand equity, both of which act as catalysts for brand love. Finally, it reveals that luxury brand love strengthens willingness to pay a price premium.
This paper proposes a new metaheuristic algorithm with a search space reduction capability guided by simple formalism. The search population focuses partially on the inside the local search area while the rest explore globally, looking for better search areas. We call the new algorithm by YUKI (YA) and employ it in a crack identification problem. With the aid of a set of measurements taken on the defected structure, we aim at identifying the crack parameters such as length and orientation. To this end, we use the so-called model reduction technique through Proper orthogonal Decomposition (POD) endorsed with Radial Basic Function (RBF), which helps in predicting (numerically) the measurement at new points (out of the set of sensors) via interpolation. This method is widely used in this context and was proven very effective computational-wise. In our study of the performance of YA, we deal with two cases; Firstly, in the case of the Elastostatic study. And secondly, in the case of dynamic analysis. We compare the performance of the suggested algorithm with the performance of well-known optimization methods, such as Teaching Learning Based Optimization (TLBO), Cuckoo Search (CS), and the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). The results show that YA provides accurate and faster results compared to the mentioned algorithms.
The design and choice of materials are important steps in the process of developing a product and it’s supposed to be designed according to consumers’ requirements and sustainability criteria. Managing these issues can be associated with Kansei Engineering (KE) methodology, which consists to translate costumers´ emotions into products’ specifications. The paper aims consists to find an optimum product packing design considering customers’ requirements and sustainability criteria, applying Kansei Engineering theory quantification type I technique and triangular fuzzy number to measure costumers´ requirements collected by questionnaires and genetic algorithm to perform the evaluation process combining costumers´ requirements and sustainability criteria by a fitness function. Considered in this study material type and specifications recycling rate, decomposition time, CO2 emission rate and reuse financial return as sustainability criteria. The proposed model based on KE and its result, a package sketch that considers costumers’ requirements and, at the same time, sustainability criteria. Implications for theory and practice: the model can be applicable and enhanced as a tool for generating improvements in the product design area.
Assessment of the cognitive functions and state of clinical subjects is an important aspect of e-health care delivery, and in the development of novel human-machine interfaces. A subject can display a range of emotions that significantly influence cognition, and emotion classification through the analysis of physiological signals is a key means of detecting emotion. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals have become a common focus of such development compared to other physiological signals because EEG employs simple and subject-acceptable methods for obtaining data that can be used for emotion analysis. We have therefore reviewed published studies that have used EEG signal data to identify possible interconnections between emotion and brain activity. We then describe theoretical conceptualization of basic emotions, and interpret the prevailing techniques that have been adopted for feature extraction, selection, and classification. Finally, we have compared the outcomes of these recent studies and discussed the likely future directions and main challenges for researchers developing EEG-based emotion analysis methods.
Due to the growing trend of social manufacturing, product design has focused on meeting the emotional needs of users. As a product attribute, color plays an important role in meeting these needs. Therefore, product color emotional design has attracted the attention of researchers. However, a user's perception of the emotional image of product color is highly complex, and it is difficult to define this perception accurately. To this end, based on the theoretical framework of Kansei engineering, this study proposes a product color emotional design method based on a convolutional neural network and a search neural network. First, we implement a semantic differential experiment to ascertain the user's color image. Then we use a convolutional neural network to establish a complex association model between the product color and the user's emotional imagery. Based on this model, the search neural network is used to search and generate the product color design scheme that meets the target image. Finally, a product color design system applicable to practical design problems is developed. An example of the design of a home service robot demonstrates that the proposed method and system provides accurate product color design solutions that meet the needs of the user's emotional image and can be used to develop practical large‐scale applications of product color emotional design theory and methods.
It was aimed in this study to determine the evaluations for “spatial quality,” “social adaptation,” and “individual productivity” of students in design studios, which used different light color temperature values. With this intention, a detailed research questionnaire was developed for measuring the effects on spatial perception of low color temperatures, daylight, and high color temperatures for a total of three different light color temperature values. A total of 113 students participated in the research questionnaire and the data obtained were analyzed with the SPSS package program. In conclusion, it was determined that the spaces lighted with the low color temperatures and daylight had more positive effects on the perceptual evaluations of the students compared to the spaces lighted with the high color temperatures according to the “spatial quality,” “social adaptation,” and “individual productivity” scales. Another result was that it was observed that the low color temperatures had somewhat more positive perceptual values compared to daylight. In addition, it was determined that males perceived more positively compared to females the interior design characteristics of the design studios.
Brand love has garnered increasing interest among practitioners and scholars, but little is known about how marketing actions drive brand love, and whether and how brand love transmutes to firm profitability. Using longitudinal brand love data collected from more than 20,000 customers of 152 corporate brands and financial data of firms who own these brands during 2006-2017, the authors examine the antecedents and financial impacts of building brand love. The results show that advertising investments help firms build brand love with diminishing returns after reaching an optimal point, whereas R&D investments positively contribute to brand love. The analyses further show that although brand love does not affect firm profitability and market value in the short term, it increases firm profitability and market value in the long term. More important, the results indicate that the positive effect of brand love on firm performance is stronger for hedonic brands, for firms in product categories that matter greatly to consumers, and those operating in highly competitive markets. Overall, the findings have important implications for marketing theory and provide actionable insights for managers into how to build and manage brand love.
AFFECT/AFFECTION. Neither word denotes a personal feeling (sentiment in Deleuze and Guattai). L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) is an ability to affect and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act. L’affection (Spinoza’s affection) is each such state considered as an encounter between the affected body and a second, affecting, body … (Massumi, Plateaus xvi) Although feeling and affect are routinely used interchangeably, it is important not to confuse affect with feelings and emotions. As Brian Massumi’s definition of affect in his introduction to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus makes clear, affect is not a personal feeling. Feelings are personal and biographical, emotions are social, and affects are prepersonal. In the remainder of this essay, I will attempt to unpack the previous sentence and provide some examples that will illustrate why the distinction I’ve made between feelings, emotions, and affects is more than pedantry. A feeling is a sensation that has been checked against previous experiences and labelled. It is personal and biographical because every person has a distinct set of previous sensations from which to draw when interpreting and labelling their feelings. An infant does not experience feelings because she/he lacks both language and biography. Yet, almost every parent will state unequivocally that their child has feelings and expresses them regularly (what the parent is actually bearing witness to is affect, about which, more shortly). An emotion is the projection/display of a feeling. Unlike feelings, the display of emotion can be either genuine or feigned. The distinction between feelings and emotions was highlighted by an experiment conducted by Paul Ekman who videotaped American and Japanese subjects as they watched films depicting facial surgery. When they watched alone, both groups displayed similar expressions. When they watched in groups, the expressions were different. We broadcast emotion to the world; sometimes that broadcast is an expression of our internal state and other times it is contrived in order to fulfill social expectations. Infants display emotions although they do not have the biography nor language skills to experience feelings. The emotions of the infant are direct expressions of affect. An affect is a non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential. Of the three central terms in this essay – feeling, emotion, and affect – affect is the most abstract because affect cannot be fully realised in language, and because affect is always prior to and/or outside of consciousness (Massumi, Parables). Affect is the body’s way of preparing itself for action in a given circumstance by adding a quantitative dimension of intensity to the quality of an experience. The body has a grammar of its own that cannot be fully captured in language because it “doesn’t just absorb pulses or discrete stimulations; it infolds contexts…” (Massumi, Parables 30). Before this gets too abstract, let’s return to the example of the infant. An infant has no language skills with which to cognitively process sensations, nor a history of previous experiences from which to draw in assessing the continuous flow of sensations coursing through his or her body. Therefore, the infant has to rely upon intensities (a term that Massumi equates with affect). “Affects are comprised of correlated sets of responses involving the facial muscles, the viscera, the respiratory system, the skeleton, autonomic blood flow changes, and vocalisations that act together to produce an analogue of the particular gradient or intensity of stimulation impinging on the organism” (Demos 19). The key here is that for the infant affect is innate. Through facial expression, respiration, posture, color, and vocalisations infants are able to express the intensity of the stimulations that impinge upon them. Thus, parents are correct when they say their children express emotion. On the other hand, they are incorrect when they attribute feelings to the little tots. Their offspring have neither the biography nor the language to feel. The transition from childhood to adulthood is one in which we partially learn how to bring the display of emotion under conscious control. Affects, however, remain non-conscious and unformed and “are aroused easily by factors over which the individual has little control . . .” (Tompkins 54). For the infant affect is emotion, for the adult affect is what makes feelings feel. It is what determines the intensity (quantity) of a feeling (quality), as well as the background intensity of our everyday lives (the half-sensed, ongoing hum of quantity/quality that we experience when we are not really attuned to any experience at all). One of the simplest ways to understand how affect continues to operate meaningfully in the lives of adults even after they have gained some conscious control over their emotions is to look at an individual whose affect system has gone haywire. Neurologist, Oliver Sacks, described his experience with such a person. She was an elderly patient who had suffered a hip fracture. The fracture resulted in the immobilisation of her leg for an extended period of time. At the time Sacks began working with her, the woman hadn’t regained feeling in her leg in three years. She was not able to consciously move her leg and she felt that it was “missing.” However, when she heard music she would involuntarily tap her foot to the beat. “This suggested the possibility of music therapy – ordinary physiotherapy had been of no use. Using support (a walker, etc.), we were able gradually to get her to dance, and we finally achieved a virtually complete recovery of the leg, even though it had been defunct for three years” (Sacks 170-1). The woman in the previous story couldn’t move her leg via the usual conscious mechanisms because the leg had become disconnected from her a-conscious awareness of her body, or “proprioception.” Proprioception is the “continuous but unconscious sensory flow from the movable parts of our body (muscles, tendons, joints), by which their position and tone and motion are continually monitored and adjusted, but in a way which is hidden from us because it is automatic and unconscious” (Sacks 43). Affect adds intensity, or a sense of urgency to proprioception which is why music – the recollection of which is partially stored in the body – could move this woman’s leg when will alone could not. What is remarkable about the story of the woman whose leg danced all on its own is not so much that affect trumped will in this particular case, but that this is just one example of the way in which affect always precedes will and consciousness (Massumi, Parables 29). At any moment hundreds, perhaps thousands of stimuli impinge upon the human body and the body responds by infolding them all at once and registering them as an intensity. Affect is this intensity. In the infant it is pure expression; in the adult it is pure potential (a measure of the body’s readiness to act in a given circumstance). Silvan Tompkins explains that affect has the power to influence consciousness by amplifying our awareness of our biological state: The affect mechanism is like the pain mechanism in this respect. If we cut our hand, saw it bleeding, but had no innate pain receptors, we would know we had done something which needed repair, but there would be no urgency to it. Like our automobile which needs a tune-up, we might well let it go until next week when we had more time. But the pain mechanism, like the affect mechanism, so amplifies our awareness of the injury which activates it that we are forced to be concerned, and concerned immediately (Tomkins 88). Without affect feelings do not “feel” because they have no intensity, and without feelings rational decision-making becomes problematic (Damasio 204-22). In short, affect plays an important role in determining the relationship between our bodies, our environment, and others, and the subjective experience that we feel/think as affect dissolves into experience. What does all of this mean for individuals who are interested in media and cultural studies? It means that describing “media effects” in terms of the communication of ideology sometimes results in the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy. This has to do with the second term in Massumi’s definitions of affect/affection. L’affection is the process whereby affect is transmitted between bodies. “The transmission of affect means that we are not self-contained in terms of our energies. There is no secure distinction between the ‘individual’ and the ‘environment’” (Brennan 6). Because affect is unformed and unstructured (unlike feelings and emotions) it can be transmitted between bodies. The importance of affect rests upon the fact that in many cases the message consciously received may be of less import to the receiver of that message than his or her non-conscious affective resonance with the source of the message. Music provides perhaps the clearest example of how the intensity of the impingement of sensations on the body can “mean” more to people than meaning itself. As Jeremy Gilbert put it, “Music has physical effects which can be identified, described and discussed but which are not the same thing as it having meanings, and any attempt to understand how music works in culture must . . . be able to say something about those effects without trying to collapse them into meanings.” In a lot of cases, the pleasure that individuals derive from music has less to do with the communication of meaning, and far more to do with the way that a particular piece of music “moves” them. While it would be wrong to say that meanings do not matter, it would be just as foolish to ignore the role of biology as we try to grasp the cultural effects of music. Of course, music is not the only form of expression that has the potential to transmit affect. Every form of communication where facial expressions, respiration, tone of voice, and posture are perceptible can transmit affect, and that list includes nearly every form of mediated communication other than the one you are currently experiencing. Let me clarify that the transmission of affect does not mean that one person’s feelings become another’s. The transmission of affect is about the way that bodies affect one another. When your body infolds a context and another body (real or virtual) is expressing intensity in that context, one intensity is infolded into another. By resonating with the intensity of the contexts it infolds, the body attempts to ensure that it is prepared to respond appropriately to a given circumstance. Given the ubiquity of affect, it is important to take note that the power of many forms of media lies not so much in their ideological effects, but in their ability to create affective resonances independent of content or meaning. The power of affect lies in the fact that it is unformed and unstructured (abstract). It is affect’s “abstractivity” that makes it transmittable in ways that feelings and emotions are not, and it is because affect is transmittable that it is potentially such a powerful social force. This is why it is important not to confuse affect with feelings and emotions, and why I agree with Brian Massumi that Lawrence Grossberg’s term “affective investments” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If, as Massumi proposes, affect is “unformed and unstructured,” and it is always prior to and/or outside of conscious awareness, how is one to “invest” in it (Parables 260)? Investment presumes forethought and a site for deposit, and affect precedes thought and is as stable as electricity. This isn’t to say that there aren’t practices where certain enhancing forms of affect are more prevalent, only that the people who engage in those practices are not investing in affect, but rather in the hope of being moved. Of course, one of the lessons of cultural studies is that investing in hope has moved people before. References Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 2004. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error. 1994. New York: Quill, 2000. Demos, Virginia E. “An Affect Revolution: Silvan Tompkin’s Affect Theory.” Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S. Tompkins. Ed. Virginia E. Demos. New York: Press Syndicate of the U. of Cambridge, 1995: 17-26. Ekman, Paul. “Universal and Cultural Differences in Facial Expression of Emotion.” Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Ed. J. R. Cole. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1972: 207-83. Gilbert, Jeremy. “Signifying Nothing: ‘Culture’, ‘Discourse’ and the Sociality of Affect. Culture Machine 2004. http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/>. Massumi, Brian. “Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements.” In Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. ———. Parables for the Virtual. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Sacks, Oliver. A Leg to Stand On. New York: Touchstone, 1984. Tompkins, Silvan. Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S. Tompkins. Ed. Virginia E. Demos. New York: Press Syndicate of the U of Cambridge, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Shouse, Eric. "Feeling, Emotion, Affect." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php>. APA Style Shouse, E. (Dec. 2005) "Feeling, Emotion, Affect," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php>.
Emotional design has been well recognized in the domain of human factors and ergonomics. In this chapter, we reviewed related models and methods of emotional design. We are motivated to encourage emotional designers to take multiple perspectives when examining these models and methods. Then we proposed a systematic process for emotional design, including affective-cognitive needs elicitation, affective-cognitive needs analysis, and affective-cognitive needs fulfillment to support emotional design. Within each step, we provided an updated review of the representative methods to support and offer further guidance on emotional design. We hope researchers and industrial practitioners can take a systematic approach to consider each step in the framework with care. Finally, the speculations on the challenges and future directions can potentially help researchers across different fields to further advance emotional design.
Affective design is the inclusion or representation of human emotions and subjective impressions in product design processes. In affective design, a number of different scales are commonly used to reveal and measure subjective emotions related to the design features of products. Osgood's Semantic Differential Scale (SDS) is one of the scales that has often been used for this purpose. However, there are some drawbacks in the SDS due to the ordinal nature of the scale that leads to losses or distortions of a significant amount of information and this makes it difficult to justify parametric statistical analysis. In this study, two scales, namely a Labeled Affective Magnitude (LAM) scale and a Fuzzy Linguistic scale, are developed. The LAM scale is an alternative scale based on magnitude estimation and has ratio properties. The Fuzzy Linguistic scale is an interval scale for which responses are linguistic descriptors that are identified with fuzzy numbers or intervals. The scales were developed for tactile feelings because they are an important factor in product evaluation. Statistical analysis was conducted to compare the scales. There was no significant difference between the newly constructed fuzzy scale and 11 point SDS, whereas there was a significant difference between the newly constructed LAM scale and 11 point SDS.
Design decision making is happened in every design node and iteration, and the expert decision-making bias and personal preference will ultimately affect the success or failure of the product reaching the market. In this paper, we try to predict the design decision making by investigating the relations between design decision making and subjects' eye movements and Electroencephalogram(EEG) response. Four different methods were applied and compared to classify the different EEG features and two methods were used for EEG feature selection to correspond the design decision making results. In this study, the authors applied a multimodal fusion strategy for design decision making recognition where the authors used eye tracking and EEG response data as input dataset. According to the experiment results, the performance of the fusion strategy combined with EEG signals and eye movement characteristics is well in fitting the expert decision making results. The multimodal fusion combining eye tracking data and EEG has a strong potential to be a new design decision method to guide the design practice and provide supportive and objective data to reduce the effects of subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality in decision making. These results show that it is possible to create a classifier based on features extracted from eye movements and EEG response for the design decision making behaviour.