Course title(Chinese)
Course title(English)
Credit（s）
Hours
Purpose
Purpose：
The main goal of the course is to train students to pay attention to the users’ emotional needs, and to acquire users’ perceptual demands through scientific methods, and help students develop their skills and capabilities for transforming the acquired perceptual demands into design elements using the correlation technique.
Task：
Students are able to conduct experimental design and data processing using emotional design methods proficiently in design research;
Make analysis and evaluation of the design objects using Kansei Engineering and related methods;
Split target design objects into specific study elements and make them analyzed, and integrate single analysis results to form a whole emotional experience application model.
Expected output of the course includes presentations of every stage, conceptual design , prototyping, design report or research paper.
About this course
1, Emotional design theory
Emotional design refers to the creation activity for the purpose of emotional communication between humans and objects. Designers integrate the color, texture, appearance, points, lines, surfaces and other elements of a product using design techniques, so that the product can affect people's senses of hearing, vision and touch through all aspects of sound, shape, figurative meaning, the appearance, etc., stimulating people’s imagination and association, and finally to achieve the spiritual communication and resonates between human and objects.
2, Kansei Engineering theories and methods
Yamamoto Kenichi proposed the concept “Kansei” in 1986. It is a theory and method that uses engineering techniques to explore the relationship between the emotion of "human" and the design characteristics of "object".It aims at the development or improvement of products and services by translating the customer's psychological feelings and needs into the domain of product design (i.e. parameters). It expresses people’s emotional imagery of “objects” (existing products, digital or virtual goods) quantitatively or semi-quantitatively, and associates the imagery with design characteristics of products, in order to embody people’s (here including consumers, designers, etc.) feelings in the process of product design, making products that meet human’s emotional expectations.
3, Semantic differential method
Semantic differential method is one of the description methods, creatively proposed by Osgood et in 1957. Subjects were asked to explain the meaning of specified sentences, which projected their psychology of consumption. The method is mostly used in scales, thereby forming a semantic differential scale. Because of the diversity of functions, semantic differential scales are widely used in market research, used to compare different brand images, as well as to help develop advertising strategies, marketing strategies and new product development program.
4, Five Senses Experience and Synaesthesia Design
Five Senses is the channel for human to acquire sensory perception of external things. The perception information acquired by sight, taste, smell, hearing and touch can be processed by the human brain, synthesizing an overall feeling perception, which constitutes a user experience. Application of the five senses in the design activities enhances the user experience and can come into being “synaesthesia” under certain conditions. Mr. Qian proposed the concept in linguistics, pointed out different combinations of the five senses will be formed into the phenomenon of spiritual connectedness, resulting in enhanced feelings and perceptions. Therefore, the research and applications of the five senses and synaesthesia in emotional design can enhance the user experience and help to achieve a relatively rich and intact experience state.
5, Image scale and its procedure
By means of experiments, statistics, computing and other scientific methods, measure, calculate and analyze people’s hierarchical psychological quantities of a certain thing to reduce the cognitive dimension of an object. and then the image scale map is obtained, thereby the distribution law is compared.
6, Data processing
Data is a representation of facts, concepts or instructions, may be processed manually or by automated means. Data become information after interpretation and being given a certain sense. Data processing includes data collection, storage, retrieval, processing, conversion and transmission. Data processing is inseparable from software support.Data processing software includes: Various programming language and its compiler software used for writing processing code, file systems and database systems used for data management, as well as various application software package including data processing methods. The processing and handling (analysis, sorting, calculating, and editing) of original data by these aids can help obtain data support which are of great value to the design activity.
7, Applications of the emotional design methods
As industrial design evolves to the present，products with purely reasonable functions or external formal beauty is no longer able to meet consumer’s demands. Perception and user experience has become the new focus of industrial design. With the proposal and development of the concept “emotional design”, many questions, such as what is emotional design, how to conduct it and the evaluation criteria of it, are constantly being discussed and studied. And with more and more research available, the theory and methods of emotional design are recreated in accordance with the changing design objects and contents to adapt to the different design requirements and achieve better practical application.
Bibliography
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