The Emotional and Aesthetic Dimensions of Design: An Exploration of User Acceptance of Consumer Products and New Vehicle Technologies

In recent years the scrutiny of the aesthetic qualities of products has been extended beyond the cerebral appreciation of form, colour, texture and so on. Current research is concerned with the emotional product experience, and this immediately amalgamates traditional aesthetic judgements with usability, reliability, longevity, value and cost. Once users know that the product offers them the functions they need, the next issue is how easy it is to use. They are likely to be discontented if functions take a lot of time and effort to use or if they struggle and make errors along the way. Kansei Engineering is a statistical approach developed by Mitsuo Nagamichi at Hiroshima University whereby the design of a product is broken down into its constituent parts and a statistical analysis is used to link people's emotional responses to particular design aspects. In-vehicle technological advances have the potential to be seen as assistive/positive or restrictive/negative by differing demographics.