Course code
Course title(Chinese)
Course title(English)
Credit（s）
Hours
Purpose
Teaching Aims：
“Art is about spirit, thus any artistic research based on science must belong to the category of Psychology. It could relate to other areas, but this belonging to the category of Psychology is permanent.” Max J. Friedländer said in “Von Kunst und Kennerschaft”. Therefore in industrial design discipline, Design Psychology methods and applications can help students form rational scientific analysis and cognitive model in terms of design research or design practice.
Teaching Demands：
Students apply methods and principles of Design Psychology to solve complex problems such as “Human-centered design” problems.The course specifically focus on exploration and experiment, along with the establishment of design research driven by demand, emotion, cognition, knowledge, aesthetic (including structural remodeling, etc.) of human. It can also train students’ ability of design research, deep designing and design systems.
About this course
1、Nature of design psychology
The basic nature of design psychology is the scientificity, objectivity and verification. And its artistry and humanities property are mainly reflected in the nature of research objects and abstract concepts. Design psychology are established on the basis of psychological study, focusing on people’s mental state in the processes of creative activities, as well as the psychological reactions of social and individuals to design and how they in turn act on design activities and guide design research and practice.
2、The basis of psychological phenomena
Psychological phenomena are manifestations of mental activity. Usually the psychological phenomenon is divided into two categories, namely mental processes and personality psychology. Psychological process refers to the psychological process, including the process of human cognition, emotion production and will process. Cognitive process is a person’s mental process when he understands and reflects objective things, including sensation, perception, memory, imagination and thought processes. Personality psychology mainly includes personality tendency and individual psychological characteristics.
3、Perception and Art
Rudolf Arnheim pointed out: "The visual image is never a mechanical reproduction for emotional material, but a creative grasp of the reality. The visual image is rich in imagination, creativity, sensitivity and aesthetics. " He tries to use science to better understand art, still keeping in mind the important aspects of personal bias, intuition, and expression. Perceptual shape may change considerably when its spatial orientation or its environment changes. Visual shapes influence one another. Simplicity for shape is quantitatively measured in terms of structural features, not in terms of number of elements or patterns. Simplicity requires a correspondence in structure between meaning and tangible pattern, what Gestalt psychologist called “isomorphism”.
4、individual behavior
Individual behavior is relative to the group behavior. In a general sense, it refers to the action that an individual takes under the domination of certain ideological awareness, emotion, will and faith,which conform or does not conform to specifications. In the organization and management activities, individual behavior tends to have some common characteristics, and is influenced by group behaviors. The study of individual behavior need to be considered from both internal subjective and external objective aspects.
5、Aesthetic psychology
Aesthetic psychology is a branch of psychology, focusing on the study and interpretation of human mental activity in the aesthetic process. The so-called aesthetics mainly refers to the generation and experience of the appreciation of beauty, while the psychological activity refers to a person's knowledge, feelings and awareness. Thus it can be said aesthetic psychology is a subject to study and explain people’s mental experience and individual tendencies in the progress of beauty appreciation.
6、Social cultural psychology
Social cultural psychology is a subject studying the mutual relationship between culture and individual psychology. Study fields including: ① studying and explaining the cultural phenomenon from the psychological view; ② studying the relationship between culture and individuality, including the relationships between culture and psychology, culture and personality, culture and behavior, culture and socialization, etc.
7、The research methods of design psychology
1 Observation is one of the basic methods of psychology. It analyzes people’s psychological activities and behavior patterns by direct, purposeful and designed observation of study objects’ words and behaviors. The core of this method is to determine the objects, manners and time according to the purpose of observation.
2 Interview is to learn the motivation, attitude, personality and values of interviewer and users by talking with them. Interviews divided into structured interviews and non-structured interviews.
3 Questionnaire is a method that to list the questions that experimenters want to learn in advance and asked the target group to answer. Conclusions are made by data analysis and statistical methods.
4 Experimental method induces users to create a certain psychological phenomenon in strictly controlled environment or conditions
5 Case study method usually acts on the basis of a sample of a certain behavior. Analyze the features of a person or a group within a certain time.
6 Sampling survey is a research process that reveals consumer internal mental activity and behavior patterns
7 Projection Method
8 Psychological description method
8、Psychology of formative art
Product formative design is to achieve the unity of a product’s external appearance and inherent functions and quality. In the premise that a product meets the functional requirements, this product was designed according to the aesthetic requirements of the consumers. This kind of holistic design thinking built on the basis of consumers’ overall demands, including their psychological demands. Formative design is an organic whole of material design and spiritual design.
9、The application of the design psychology
Bibliography
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