Seeing things:consumer respon to the visual domain in product design Nathan Crilly,James Moultrie and P.John Clarkson,Engineering Design Centre,Department of Engineering,University of Cambridge,Trumpington Street,Cambridge CB21PZ,UK
This paper discuss consumer respon to product visual form within the context of an integrated conceptual framework.Emphasis is placed on the aesthetic,mantic and symbolic aspects of cognitive respon to design.The accompanying affective and behavioural respons are also discusd and the interaction between cognitive and affective respon is considered.All aspects of respon are prented as the final stage in a process of communication between the design team and the consumer.The role of external visual references is examined and the effects of moderating influences at each stage in the process of communication are discusd.In particular,the personal,situational and cultural factors that moderate respon are considered.In concluding the paper,implications for design practice and design rearch are prented.
#2004Elvier Ltd.All rights rerved.
Keywords:aesthetics,product design,styling,perception,ur behaviour T
he visualappearance of products is a criticaldeterminant of consumer respon and product success.1
Judgements are often made on the elegance,2functionality 3and socialsignifi-cance 4of products bad largely on visual information.The judge-ments relate to the perceived attributes of products and frequently centre on the satisfaction of consumer wants and desires,rather than their needs.5Urs’requirements of designed products have frequently been com-pared to Maslow’s 6hierarchy of needs.5,7–11This suggests that once issues of utility,safety and comfort have been satisfied,emphasis may shift towards the decorative,emotionaland symbol ic attributes of design.Thus,depending on motivation and context,a product’s 1Bloch,P H ‘Seeking the
ideal form:product design and
consumer respon’Journal of
Marketing Vol 59(1995)16–29
2Coates,D Watches tell more
than time:product design,infor-
mation and the quest for
elegance McGraw-Hill,London,
UK (2003)
3Mono
¨,R Design for product understanding Liber,Stockholm,
Sweden (1997)
4Dittmar,H The social psy-
chology of material posssions:
to have is to be St Martin’s
Press,New York,NY (1992)
5Lewalski,Z M Product
esthetics:an interpretation for
designers Design &Develop-
ment Engineering Press,Carson
City,NV
(1988)
perceived attributes may be of greater importance than its tangible properties.This is becau appearances are important,11,12and ‘con-sumers don’t just buy a product,they buy value in the form of enter-tainment,experience and identity’.131Background 1.1The need for a review and framework
There is a wide variety of literature related to respon to product appearance.When surveying this literature,boundaries can be difficult to establish as ‘almost everything encountered [is]found to have some potentialrel evance to human perception of products’.14In addition to design rearch,fields of interest typically include aesthetics,psychology,consumer rearch,sociology,marketing and miotics.Crozier 15and Bloch 1have drawn together ideas from many of the fields and prented excellent overviews of respon to design.Sub-quently,there have been a number of significant contributions to understanding how product design influences respon.In particular,Mono ¨3and Coates 2have offered new theories on product design that expand upon specific areas described by Bloch and Crozier.To date,the theories prented by the authors have not been reviewed and considered against the context of other work.Conquently,many of the ideas prented in the literature have not been connected even when they are complementary.Work is often prented without reference to that which precedes it and new language is developed for concepts that have already been described.To some extent this may be accounted for by (even excellent)texts being out-of-print,difficult to locate or generally not well known.In addition to the abnce of a comprehensive literature review,the existing models and frameworks have not previously been integrated to form a generaland coherent perspective.The detail ed frameworks related to specific aspects of product appearance are not t within the context of a more generaltheoreticalframework.
Conquentl y,there is little support available for categorising and structuring the relevant literature.This hinders the development of a proper understanding of the subject and may lead to failure in appreciating the relevance of each contribution.Indeed,when considering the subject of consumer respon to product design Veryzer commented that ‘progress has been greatly impeded by the lack of a conceptual framework’.166Maslow,A H Motivation and
梦见乳房personality third ed.,Harper &
Row,New York,NY (1987)
7Yalch,R and Brunel,F
‘Need hierarchies in consumer
judgements of product designs:
is it time to reconsider Maslow ’s
theory?’Advances in Consumer
2022假期
Rearch Vol 23(1996)405–
410
8Rutter,B G and Agne,J
AW ‘A Darwinian theory of good
design ’Design Management
Journal Vol Fall (1998)36–41
9Jordan,P W Designing
pleasurable products:an intro-
duction to the new human
factors Taylor &Francis,
London,UK (2000)
10Gotzsch,J Beautiful and
共产主义远大理想
meaningful products in DESIGN
plus RESEARCH Conference
送老婆的生日礼物
木耳热量Politecnico di Milano,Italy
(2000)pp 146–154
11Viemeister,T ‘Beautility ’
Innovation:The Journal of the
Industrial Designers Society of
America Vol 20No 3(2001)38–
41
12Postrel,V I The substance
of style:how the ri of aes-
thetic value is remaking com-
merce,culture,and con-
sciousness HarperCollins,New
York,NY (2003)
13Esslinger,H in F Sweet
(ed)Frog:forms follows emotion
Thames &Hudson,London,UK
(1999)
14Taylor,A J,Roberts,P H
and Hall,M JD ‘Understanding
person product relationships —a
design perspective ’in W S
Green and P W Jordan (eds)
Human factors in product
design:current practice and
future trends ,Taylor &Francis,
London,UK (1999)
15Crozier,W R Manufactured
pleasures:psychological res-
pon to design Manchester
University Press,Manchester,
UK (1994)
16Veryzer,R WJ ‘Aesthetic
respon and the influence of
design principles on product pre-
ferences’Advances in Con-
sumer Rearch Vol 20(1993)
224–228
548Design Studies Vol25No.6November 2004
1.2Scope
This paper provides a literature review on the subject of product appearance that is structured around the development of an integrated conceptualframework.The framework is buil t up as the concepts are discusd and the terminology introduced in the text is carried over to the framework.By reviewing existing work and prenting it within a unified structure it is hoped that the following benefits will be realid:
.Listing and reviewing the existing texts will provide a point of reference for the subject.
.Little-known or recent texts that offer significant contributions to the field will achieve wider recognition,increasing their influence..Complementary theories prented by different authors will be drawn together and prented so that their commonalties may be obrved.
.Prenting a generalframework integrating the perspectives of a number of authors will provide a structure by which the subject may be better understood.
Although visual information frequently dominates our culture and environment 12,17it is accepted that the full range of human ns influence respon to design.18It is important that a product’s appear-ance is congruent with other nsory aspects of design,19,20as ‘the product form that the eye es creates in the obrver expectation of what the other ns will perceive’.3This paper focus solely on the visualform of products.However,the concepts discusd are bel ieved to be relevant to other nsory aspects of product interaction.Furthermore,although physical products are referred to throughout,it is hoped that the information prented will be considered appli-cable to a broader range of media.1.3Notes on language When discussing product appearance,it is important to establish pre-ci definitions,as the language ud can be confusing and inconsist-ent.21In partic
ular,the term aesthetic is commonly ud to refer to two different concepts.Firstly,in the context of product aesthetics it may relate to what the product prents to the ns (especially vision).5Secondly,in the context of aesthetic experience it may relate to one particular aspect of cognitive respon:the perception of how pleasing (or otherwi)the process of regarding an object is.22For clarity,in this paper the term aesthetic is only ud to refer to aes-thetic respon and not product appearance in general.In addition,17Schroeder,J Visual con-sumption Routledge,London,UK (2002)18Macdonald,A S ‘Aesthetic intelligence:optimizing ur-centred design ’Journal of Engineering Design Vol 12No 1
(2000)37–45
19Smets,G,Overbeeke,K
and Gaver,W Form-giving:
expressing the nonobvious in
Human Factors in Computing
袁隆平的两个梦想Systems Conference Boston,
MA (1994)pp 79–84
20Smets,G JF and Over-
beeke,C J ‘Expressing tastes in
packages ’Design Studies Vol
16No 3(1995)349–365
21Wallendorf,M ‘The forma-
tion of aesthetic criteria through
social structures and social insti-
tutions ’Advances in Consumer
Rearch Vol 7(1980)3–6
22Csikszentmihalyi,M and
Robinson,R E The art of e-
ing:an interpretation of the aes-
thetic experience J.Paul Getty
Muum,Los Angeles,CA
(1990)Seeing things:consumer respon to the visualdomain in product design 549
the term consumer is ud throughout this paper not only to refer to tho involved in purcha decisions but also to include tho involved in the ongoing process of visual consumption.17Other terms such as miotic,mantic and symbolic are defined in the text as they are introduced.Attempts have been made to adhere to the definitions found in the existing literature.
2Communication through design
投币式洗衣机In general,consumers have no access to the designers of the products they interact with.Thus,the co
泛亚汽车
nsumers’interpretation of the design is bad predominantly on their interaction with the product.23Design-ers only communicate attributes such as elegance,functionality, mode-of-u and socialsignificance through the medium of the pro-duct.This miotic perspective on product design focus on viewing products as signs capable of reprentation.24If products are to be considered as signs that are interpreted by urs,it is ufulto consider consumer respon to product appearance as one stage in a process of communication.2,3,25
Shannon described a basic system of communication as comprising five elements:source,transmitter,channel,receiver and destination. The information source produces a message which is encoded into a signaland transmitted across a channel.The receiver decodes the signaland the message arrives at the destination26(e Figure1).
Mono¨has applied this basic model of communication to the study of product design.3Here,the producer of the product is responsible for design and manufacture.The designer,or the design team,may be viewed as the source of the message.The product itlf may be regar-ded as the transmitter of the message,and the environment in which the consumer interacts with the product may be regarded as the chan-nel.The consumer is involved in both the perception of products and subquent respon.Conquently,the consumer’s perceptual ns may be regarded as the rece
iver of the design message and their faculty for respon may be regarded as the destination.
The orthodox view of consumer behaviour prents respon to pro-ducts as comprising cognition and affect ,which are followed by behav-iour .1,27Thus,the destination may be divided into the three aspects of respon.This suggests a reprentation of the design communi-cation process where designers have intentions for how a product should appear,the product is manufactured,placed in an environ-ment,perceived by the consumer and finally responded to (e Figure 2).Each of the elements of the communications model will be discusd below.
2.1Design team (source)
The design message is generated during the product development pro-cess.3Here,the design team makes decisions that determine what the product form should visually convey.10The design team may be char-acterid by the individuals involved in the project,the design activi-ties they employ and the organisation or management of the activities.1,28
2.2
Product (transmitter)The physicalproduct may be characterid by its geometry,dimen-sions,textures,
materials,colours,graphics and detailing.29–31Aspects such as the perceived novelty,style and personality of products are not considered here to be characteristics of the product becau they are not objective qualities of the design.Instead,they are prented as aspects of the consumers’psychological respon to the product.2.3Environment (channel)The environment within which the product is to be perceived may be characterid by the physicalconditions of the context of
interaction.Figure 2Basic framework for design as a process of communication
27O ’Shaughnessy,J Explain-
ing buyer behavior Oxford Uni-
versity Press,Oxford,UK (1992)
28Simon,H A The sciences
of the artificial cond ed.,The
MIT Press,Cambridge,MA
(1981)
29Hannah,G G Elements of
design Princeton Architectural
Press,New York,NY (2002)
30De Sausmarez,M Basic
design:the dynamics of visual
form Herbert,London,UK,
(Revid Edition)(1983)
31Scott,R G Design funda-
mentals McGraw-Hill Book
Company,New York,NY (1951)Seeing things:consumer respon to the visualdomain in product design 551
