Cognitive Design

Pieter Desmet has done important work on modeling product emotions.  A few key ideas from his work:

·        Product experience is made up of three components including aesthetic pleasure, attribution of meaning, and emotional response (follows Hekkert)

·        Individual differences in emotional response to products cannot be explained by age or gender but more by culture (Dutch, Japanese and US were compared in his dissertation) 

·        Individual’s emotional responses to products vary but the process of eliciting emotions is universal so you need to understand context (goals, standards, attitudes of users)

He has developed and successfully used a tool for measuring emotional reactions that queues on 14 different states including: 

Unpleasant: Indignation, Contempt, Disgust, Unpleasant surprise, Dissatisfaction, Disappointment, Boredom and Pleasant: Desire, Pleasant surprise, Inspiration,  Amusement,  Admiration, Satisfaction, Fascination.

Feedback is collected via the use of cartoon/icon expressions of the emotion and reports that you have, somewhat have or do not have that emotion when interacting with the product.

This is one of the few research-based and field tested tools for designing emotions that I have found.  Watch for a review of his book, Designing Emotions, in this blog later in the year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Books, Design, Related Fields, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.