Emotional Design: Exploring Principles of Positive Sensory Stimulation in Product Design
Emotional design investigates the principles and application of positive sensory stimulation to create a positive user experience in product design. Through meaning-making, it examines how and why emotional connections with products are formed and how design can foster long-lasting emotional attachment. The goal of this research direction is to extend the product lifecycle and conserve resources.
Ongoing Projects:
Experience-driven practice-based research on handbag design principles
This project studies the connections between sensory perceptions preserved in memories and product descriptions to understand how products are perceived and experienced, which experiences become long-lasting memories, what emotions drive remembrance, and how memories influence emotional attachment to products. The aim is to integrate new knowledge into the design process to extend the potential lifespan of products.
The focus is on handbags, as they are everyday items with significant roles in their owners’ lives. A handbag’s exterior is public, reflecting the carrier’s cultural and social values, attitudes, different roles, and daily needs, while its interior is hidden, personal, and private. The functional and symbolic value of handbags, along with their ambivalence and importance in the owner’s everyday activities, provides a suitable context for collecting memories and incorporating them as input for bag design.
The project includes collecting handbag-related memories, creating a collection of bags based on the collected data, gathering feedback on the prototypes, and analyzing the results.
Research Lead: Jaana Päeva
Research Team Members: Kadri Kruus, Maris Rosenthal
Duration: 01.08.2023–31.12.2024
Funding: Estonian Ministry of Culture
ETIS: link