Emotional design: A multisensory evaluation to visual and olfactory perceptions of consumers

Emotional design is one of the most important methods in modern product design. It was highlighted after Donald A. Norman published his book Emotional design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. Emotional design addresses people’s needs and hopes which is in the center of the development of product design and product technology. Due to the lack of strong theoretical basis and quantitative analysis, many products can’t reach the goal of their designers with Emotional feelings, nor can consumer’s emotional understandings be similar to the designers’ emotional expectations. This paper analyzes the concept of emotional design and some difficulties which designers must to be faced in their emotional designing works, discusses on product shape design according to emotional design. On this basis, the Kansei engineering and emotional design methods are described in details.

Emotional design is an important development trend of interaction design. Emotional design in products plays a key role in enhancing user experience and inducing user emotional resonance. In recent years, based on the user's emotional experience, the design concept of strengthening product emotional design has become a new direction for most designers to improve their design thinking. In the emotional interaction design, the machine needs to capture the user's key information in real time, recognize the user's emotional state, and use a variety of clues to finally determine the appropriate user model. Based on this background, this research uses a deep learning mechanism for more accurate and effective emotion recognition, thereby optimizing the design of the interactive system and improving the user experience. First of all, this research discusses how to use user characteristics such as speech, facial expression, video, heartbeat, etc., to make machines more accurately recognize human emotions. Through the analysis of various characteristics, the speech is selected as the experimental material. Second, a speech-based emotion recognition method is proposed. The mel-Frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) of the speech signal is used as the input of the improved long and short-term memory network (ILSTM). To ensure the integrity of the information and the accuracy of the output at the next moment, ILSTM makes peephole connections in the forget gate and input gate of LSTM, and adds the unit state as input data to the threshold layer. The emotional features obtained by ILSTM are input into the attention layer, and the self-attention mechanism is used to calculate the weight of each frame of speech signal. The speech features with higher weights are used to distinguish different emotions and complete the emotion recognition of the speech signal. Experiments on the EMO-DB and CASIA datasets verify the effectiveness of the model for emotion recognition. Finally, the feasibility of emotional interaction system design is discussed.

In today's competitive market, successful product development hinges on understanding user needs and experiences. With the proliferation of expanding technologies like the Internet of Things, developers can gather vast amounts of data about user interactions. To leverage this wealth of information effectively, a user-centred approach to product development is imperative. This paper explores the convergence of usability and emotional design in product development, examining their interplay and impact on user experience. Through a review of existing literature, it investigates influential factors shaping the prioritisation of usability and emotional design elements. Key questions addressed include identifying these influential factors, assessing their impact on usability and emotional design, and elucidating their interrelationships. By shedding light on these dynamics, this systematic review aims to inform product developers and designers, facilitating the creation of products that resonate with users on both usableand emotional levels.

This study proposes a product form feature (PFF) selection method based on a numerical definition-based approach (NDA) and the consumers' image perceptions (CIPs). In the proposed approach, NDA is used to generate an explicit numerical definition of the product form design and the corresponding CIPs are determined by means of a semantic differential experiment. A CIP prediction model is constructed using support vector regression (SVR) techniques. Finally, the feature selection method, namely SVR with support vector machine recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE), is used to identify the critical form features. The validity of the feature selection method is demonstrated using a knife design for illustration purposes. The result shows that the proposed method provides product designers with a powerful tool for systematically selecting the critical form features and evaluating their respective effects on the consumers' image perceptions.

Adolescents with and without learning disabilities (14, 16, and 18 years old) were tested to determine whether they differed in auditory, visual, and/or multisensory (combined auditory/visual) social perception abilities. Differences between the two groups in growth of auditory, visual, and multisensory social-perception abilities were also measured. Results of the data analyses revealed that adolescents with learning disabilities were not as adept at understanding nonverbal social information regardless of whether the information was visual or multisensory in nature. Further, nonverbal social-perception ability for both visual and multisensory information improved with increasing age for both populations. Finally, adolescents with learning disabilities continued to demonstrate comparatively poorer social-perception abilities through the 18-year level.

Emotional design for smart product-service system: A case study on smart beds

Recently, smart products have not only demonstrated more functionality and technical capabilities but have also shown a trend towards emotional expression. Emotional design plays a crucial role in smart products as it not only influences users’ perception and evaluation of the product but also promotes collaborative communication between users and the product. In the future, emotional design of smart products needs to be regarded as an important comprehensive design issue, rather than simply targeting a specific element. It should consider factors such as design systems, values, business strategies, technical capabilities, design ethics, and cultural responsibilities. However, currently, there is a lack of a design model that combines these elements. Currently, there are numerous practices in emotional design for smart products from different perspectives. They provide us an opportunity to build a comprehensive design model based on a large number of design case studies. Therefore, this study employed a standardized grounded theory approach to investigate 80 smart products and conducted interviews with 12 designers to progressively code and generate a design model. Through the coding process, this research extracted 547 nodes and gradually formed 10 categories, ultimately resulting in a design model comprising 5 sequential steps. This model includes user requirements, concept definition, design ideation, design implementation, and evaluation, making it applicable to most current and future emotional design issues in smart products.

In this research binocular rivalry is used as a tool to investigate different aspects of visual and multisensory perception. Several experiments presented here demonstrated that touch specifically interacts with vision during binocular rivalry and that the interaction likely occurs at early stages of visual processing, probably V1 or V2. Another line of research also presented here demonstrated that human adult visual cortex retains an unexpected high degree of experience-dependent plasticity by showing that a brief period of monocular deprivation produced important perceptual consequences on the dynamics of binocular rivalry, reflecting a homeostatic plasticity. In summary, this work shows that binocular rivalry is a powerful tool to investigate different aspects of visual perception and can be used to reveal unexpected properties of early visual cortex.

MotivationThe empowerment of design for cultural and creative products in the digital media era is further amplified by social media platforms,its emotional and subconscious impact on users is important and profound. The development of the network economy has promoted this trend. At the same time, this trend has further promoted the growth of cultural and creative products market. However, too obscure appearance design can hardly arouse the resonance of different cultural groups in a short time. As an effective method to bridge the cultural gap between consumers, emotional design has become an important driving force for the development of cultural and creative products.PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand the impact of emotional factors on the willingness and preferences of ordinary consumers to buy Chinese cultural and creative products, and to further explore whether there are cognitive differences between the emotional design standards defined and promoted by professionals and the excellent design recognized by consumers according to their life experience and personal subjective emotional preferences.Design/methodology/approachThrough the construction of the emotional design model, this study selects four award-winning products in the cultural and creative product design competition and four commercial products with high sales volume in the online stores as research cases. Through 176 valid questionnaires conducted by non-professionals, this study makes an analysis by using the structural equation.ConclusionsThe study found that consumers' preference and purchase intention of Chinese cultural and creative products are affected by emotional design standards, but the impact results depend on the interaction of many factors. At the same time, there are also significant differences in cognitive paths between them.

Extracting perceived landscape properties from text sources

Rapid developments in Information Technology drastically changes many sectors including exhibition designing. The exhibition designing has evolved from the early exhibits, where the focus was on user’s single-line interaction, to two-way interactive model which is more preferred and efficient. The physical environment layout was utilized to display the development of multi-dimensional virtual space, and the user is the sole controller of the display space. The exhibition space is not only a three-dimensional hall, but a multi-dimensional setting which can appeal to the user’s sense of vision, smell and other perceptions. Such exhibitions can even create an experience of travelling through time and space. Based on the nature of public welfare science education institutions with educational exhibition as its main function, the science and technology exhibition hall mainly caters to the youth. Modern science and technology exhibition halls must utilize science and technology related to human-computer interaction and use its target audience’s curiosity for new things to facilitate dissemination of scientific principles and technological achievements. This can be achieved through encouraging participation, creating experiences etc. through interactive exhibits and auxiliary displays means at the modern science and technology exhibition halls. This approach should be considered for its merits.

In Visual Thinking , the psychologist Rudolf Arnheim argued that there is no division between seeing and thinking: “Visual perception is visual thinking” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 14). As for smell and taste, “one can indulge in smells and tastes, but one can hardly think in them” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 18). That dismissive judgment as regards the cognitive potential of olfaction by such a prominent psychologist does not bode well for a book that is dedicated to the theme of olfaction and cognition. Denigration of olfaction is a common theme among Western thinkers (cf. Le Guerer, Chapter 1, this volume). The eighteenth-century philosopher Condillac, for example, remarked that “of all the senses smell is the one that seems to contribute the least to the operations of the human mind” (Condillac, 1930, p. xxxi). His contemporary, Immanuel Kant, similarly wrote: “To which organic sense do we owe the least and which seems to be the most dispensible? The sense of smell. It does not pay us to cultivate it or to refine it in order to gain enjoyment; this sense can pick up more objects of aversion than of pleasure (especially in crowded places) and, besides, the pleasure coming from the sense of smell cannot be other than fleeting and transitory” (Kant, 1978, p. 46). The Kantian line of thought continues to inform the way in which aesthetic experience is conceptualized in the West. Aesthetic experience is defined as the disinterested contemplation of some object in which beauty inheres.

With the development of intelligent products, products are increasingly able to provide personalised feedback to users. Product designs must meet users’ emotional needs to deliver a positive experience. The current study examined emotional design, focusing on emotional arousal and methods for converting users from negative to positive emotional states. However, products are typically used in an emotional context with a specific usage scenario. Integrating emotional elements into a design can reveal users’ concerns and needs, enabling user-centered emotional design. The current study examined the distribution of users’ attention to product features under different emotional conditions. On the basis of the theory of visual attention, this study used emotional induction methodology and eye-tracking technology to observe users’ attention to different product features after the induction of three different emotional states. We established a labeled product feature database and explored the influence of emotional scenes on user preferences. These research findings can provide theoretical support for emotional design of products under specific emotional scenarios and effectively guide designers to arrange design elements.

Flying Apsaras is the most representative image of God in Dunhuang fresco art. In order to draw the distance between flying apsaras and consumers and to promote the demand of consumers to take them home,this paper explores a new way of design based on the theory of emotional design. Based on the analysis of flying image developed on the basis of different periods,and combined with the present,in the form of Dunhuang Feitian cultural and creative design,user, diversified consumer demand and market development,analytical feelings when below and the significance of design,explore the emotional design,booster,the design of Dunhuang Feitian cultural and emotional design combined with Dunhuang Feitian cultural and design strategy. Using the emotion to influence and guide the users,to achieve the resonance of product designer and user. From the visual dimension, experience dimension, spiritual dimension derivative research and development of new era and new connotation of cultural design, make Dunhuang Apsaras "alive", make Dunhuang Apsaras culture into the public vision, meet the emotional needs of consumers, both inside and outside, and finally achieve a winwin situation of cultural heritage and cultural product innovation.

Aggregation in social fishes has evolved to improve safety from predators. The individual interaction mechanisms that govern collective behavior are determined by the sensory systems that translate environmental information into behavior. In dynamic environments, shifts in conditions impede effective visual sensory perception in fish schools, and may induce changes in the collective response. Here, we consider whether environmental conditions that affect visual contrast modulate the collective response of schools to looming predators. By using a virtual environment to simulate four contrast levels, we tested whether the collective state of minnow fish schools was modified in response to a looming optical stimulus. Our results indicate that fish swam slower and were less polarized in lower contrast conditions. Additionally, schooling metrics known to be regulated by non-visual sensory systems tended to correlate better when contrast decreased. Over the course of the escape response, schools remained tightly formed and retained the capability of transferring social information. We propose that when visual perception is compromised, the interaction rules governing collective behavior are likely to be modified to prioritize ancillary sensory information crucial to maximizing chance of escape. Our results imply that multiple sensory systems can integrate to control collective behavior in environments with unreliable visual information.