Paul Hekkert

Beauty in the eye of expert and nonexpert beholders : A study in the appraisal of art

In this study, professional art experts and nonexperts with an active interest in art rated sets of 10-20 slides of artworks made available by young artists. Each set was rated on bipolar scales, including not original-original; absence of crafts-manship-craftsmanship; and poor quality-good quality. Intraclass coefficients R i for these three scales were .17, .21, and .22 for experts and .19, .08, and .16 for nonexperts, respectively. There was a significant agreement between experts and nonexperts with respect to originality, but no agreement with respect to craftsmanship and quality. The correlation between originality and quality was significantly (p <.01) higher for experts (r.88) than for nonexperts (r=.40). Thus, experts seem to attach much more value to originality in determining aesthetic quality than nonexperts.

Design for socially responsible behavior: A classification of influence based on intended user experience

Introduction Whether a result of the financial crisis, the public perception of massive overconsumption, or global climate change, designers are increasingly motivated “to do good for society.” This interest seems to manifest itself primarily in two ways. First, designers and design companies are behaving in more socially responsible ways in their product development. A focus on the use of recyclable materials, the rejection of child labor, and the use of sheltered workshops are possible consequences of such an attitude. Second, designers are using their design skills to tackle social problems. In these cases, designers apply design thinking and design methodologies to social issues to create innovative solutions. With this interest, education, safety, and health care have become domains for designers.1 Because many, if not all, social issues involve behaviors that play a crucial role in initiating a desired change, the power of design as a deliberate means to change behavior has garnered increased interest. This interest is currently and prominently present in the field of sustainable design. The conventional goal of sustainable design initially was to design products that require the least energy to be produced and used and that could be recycled. Currently, the idea is growing that to really effect change, sustainable design must be capable of changing user behavior. For example, there is simply little to be optimized in our kettle’s heating system, but if the amount of unnecessary water we repeatedly boil could be reduced, a substantial reduction in energy loss could be achieved. This notion of the significance of user behavior in terms of environmental implications has led to design for what is called “sustainable behavior.”2 While our knowledge about how design can change behavior is rapidly expanding, the way a user might potentially experience this influence is rarely discussed. However, the user’s experience of that influence does play an important role in the effectiveness of the design intervention. When a person tries to persuade another to act differently, attitude, tone of voice and expressions affect the experience of the one being persuaded and, thus, his or her motivation to act. In this article, we propose a classification of

Shifts in sensory dominance between various stages of user–product interactions

In the area of product design, sensory dominance can be defined as the relative importance of different sensory modalities for product experience. It is often assumed that vision dominates the other senses. In the present study, we asked 243 participants to describe their experiences with consumer products in various situations: while buying a product, after the first week, the first month, and the first year of usage. The data suggest that the dominant sensory modality depends on the period of product usage. At the moment of buying, vision is the most important modality, but during the usage the other sensory modalities gain importance. The roles of the different modalities during usage are product-dependent. Averaged over 93 products analyzed in this study, after one month of usage touch becomes more important than vision, and after one year vision, touch and audition appear to be equally important. We conclude that to create a long-lasting positive product experience, designers need to consider user-product interaction at different stages of product usage and to determine which sensory modality dominates product experience at each stage.

Surprise As a Design Strategy

Imagine yourself queuing for the cashier’s desk in a supermarket. Naturally, you have picked the wrong line, the one that does not seem to move at all. Soon, you get tired of waiting. Now, how would you feel if the cashier suddenly started to sing? Many of us would be surprised and, regardless of the cashier’s singing abilities, feel amused. The preceding story is an example of how a surprise can transform something very normal, and maybe even boring, into a more pleasant experience. Analogously, a surprise in a product can overcome the habituation effect that is due to the fact that people encounter many similar products everyday. Colin Martindale describes this effect as ‘the gradual loss of interest in repeated stimuli’.¹ A surprise reaction to a product can be beneficial to both a designer and a user. The designer benefits from a surprise reaction because it can capture attention to the product, leading to increased product recall and recognition, and increased word-ofmouth.² Or, as Jennifer Hudson puts it, the surprise element “elevates a piece beyond the banal”.³ A surprise reaction has its origin in encountering an unexpected event. The product user benefits from the surprise, because it makes the product more interesting to interact with. In addition, it requires updating, extending or revising the knowledge the expectation was based on. This implies that a user can learn somethingnew about a product or product aspect. Designers already use various strategies to design surprises in their products. Making use of contrast, mixing design styles or functions, using new materials or new shapes, and using humor are just a few of these. The lamp ‘Porca Miseria!’ designed by Ingo Maurer that is shown in the left part of Figure 1 consists of broken pieces of expensive porcelain tableware, making it a lamp with a unique shape. The idea that another product had to be destroyed to make this lamp may inflict feelings of 3 puzzlement and amusement on someone who sees this lamp. The perfume ‘Flowerbomb’ (right part of Figure 1) designed by fashion designers Victor & Rolf is another example. The bottle is shaped like a hand grenade and it holds a sweet smelling, soft pink liquid. By combining conflicting elements in their perfume bottle, Victor & Rolf have succeeded in creating a perfume that attracts attention amidst the dozens of perfumes that line the walls of perfumeries.

The impact of level of expertise on the evaluation of original and altered versions of post-impressionistic paintings

Abstract Twelve post-impressionistic paintings were manipulated along two dimensions: degree of realism (figurative vs. abstract) and colour (colour vs. black-and-white). The resulting 48 pictures were rated by three groups of twenty subjects each, on a number of rating scales. The three groups differed as to their expertise in art. Analyses of variance on the mean liking scores indicated that the negative effects of changing the original pictures to abstract or black-and-white versions decreased with increasing expertise. This differential impact of the experimental manipulations confirmed hypotheses about changes in taste due to artistic training.

10 – PRODUCT AESTHETICS

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews research on aesthetic appreciation and demonstrates that preferences or taste judgments obey certain rules or principles. It argues that many of these principles are rooted in human nature and can somehow be explained on the basis of adaptations of our sensory systems and brains to one’s environment. Aesthetics is a very old concept, rooted in the Greek word aisthesis that can be translated as understanding through sensory perception. In the eighteenth century the concept started to be used to refer to sensory pleasure and delight. Although this definition of aesthetics is to some degree limiting, most of the research done in the area of experimental aesthetics since the pioneering work of Fechner (1876) is relevant for this overview. Much of this research focused on finding, mostly visual properties of objects, whether simple patterns, artworks or designed objects, determining aesthetic preference. These properties are generally classified into three classes: psychophysical, organizational, and meaningful properties. The psychophysical properties are the formal qualities of objects, such as their intensity, size, and color (in terms of hue, saturation, brightness), or, generally speaking, properties that can be quantified. Aesthetic effects of these properties are highly relational and contextual. This chapter also discusses the two other classes of properties, organizational and meaningful properties. In this discussion, it confines itself as much as possible to studies involving design objects as stimulus material. Findings from those studies often suggest universal agreement in aesthetic pleasure. It also explains why and under what conditions people of different times and cultures aesthetically prefer the same properties, and not only visually. Furthermore, it presents some implications for designers and the field of design.

The Effect of Verbal Instruction and Artistic Background on the Aesthetic Judgment of Rectangles

A review of studies on the judgment of rectangle proportions pointed out that individual differences in preference might be partly due to differences in verbal instructions given to the subjects. In the present experiment two types of instruction were used and their effects on both naive and experienced (art school) subjects were assessed. Following a subjective instruction, emphasizing personal preference, mean ratings of naive subjects revealed a preference peak around the Golden Section, whereas mean ratings of experienced viewers peaked at the square. In the objective condition, involving judgment of the goodness of proportion regardless of personal liking, the mean preferences of both groups clearly tended toward the square. Individual preference functions partly confirmed these mean patterns, but demonstrated large intersubject variability. Moreover, the naive viewers were significantly more consistent in their ratings than the experienced ones.

The experimental assessment of sensory dominance in a product development context

Although all senses are open to obtain information during user-product interactions, some sensory information can have a larger effect on the product experience than others. We investigated an experimental approach to quantify the relative importance of the sensory modalities in user-product interactions. For each modality, two stimuli were selected with comparable differences in pleasantness scores. All possible stimulus combinations were evaluated for two products: a portable air purifier and a table lamp. Both studies found a significant effect on pleasantness only for different product colours, suggesting that vision was the dominant modality for both products. Interestingly, next to vision, smell affected responses on the activity dimension of product experience, whereas touch and sound affected the potency dimension. Because we found hardly any relationship between the pleasantness of a complex product and the pleasantness of its component stimuli, we discuss a number of factors that may have interfered.

Prototypicality as an Explanatory Concept in Aesthetics: A Reply to Boselie (1991)

After more than a decade of research into the effect of prototypicality on aesthetic preference, Boselie strongly questioned the validity of this concept [1]. It is argued, however, that his arguments against prototypicality as an explanatory concept in aesthetics are not convincing. The observed effects of prototypicality on preference together with theoretical notions on the importance of classification for perception and appraisal make a strong case for examining the relations between aesthetic preference and (proto)typicality.

Measuring and adapting behavior during product interaction to influence affect

Sometimes, the way in which we interact with products implicitly communicates how we feel. Based on previous studies on how emotions can be detected and communicated via product interaction, we discuss how an interactive product could influence affect by responding and changing behaviors expressing affect. We discuss the proposal of the affective feedback loop in product interaction by its implementation in the prototype of a pen that senses two implicit behaviors related to restlessness, rock and roll. Furthermore, the pen provides inherent feedback, focusing on the perceptual motor skills, as a means to reflect on these behaviors. The pen was evaluated in an experiment, by which we explored whether this type of feedback would influence the emotional experience. Two participant groups were compared, and participants that used the pen with feedback showed a lower heart rate throughout the whole experiment. Because these participants were not aware that the pen provided any feedback, we propose the concept of unaware interaction and discuss what its implications are for design.