Situated Design Thinking: Experientially Based Design Approaches
DS 73-1 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity Volume 1
Year: 2012
Editor: Duffy, A.; Nagai, Y.; Taura, T.
Author: Tan, B.
Section: Evaluation
Page(s): 241-252
Abstract
We do not design things in a vacuum, but rather, it is done in a dynamic relationship with people, their environment, cultural, sociological and ideological dispositions (Fulton-Suri, 2002). There are vast areas of human experiences that have barely begun to be explored, in particular those that are related to people‘s emotional responses to objects in the context of industrial design in Singapore. The literature review will show that there is little explicit knowledge to understand people‘s experiences and emotional responses that would be helpful to designers in making predictions about designing products, although there are some useful frameworks available to help us think about these issues. This study was conducted to investigate how the knowledge of the experiential properties of users can be effective in the area of product design. It is divided into two parts with the first being the literature review on experiential design approaches and sensorial elements in product design, and the second being the application of the findings to the design of a product. This study looks at user experiences with products in a holistic, experiential base approach, linking these experiential characteristics which are subjective, and relating them against the formal objective qualities of a designed object, to better understand the intangible perceived values that people afford to products. The outcomes of the study indicated that subjective experiential descriptors can be related to specific formal qualities of a product, creating specific product experiences. This will assist product designers to create lasting, memorable product experiences.
Keywords: situated, emotive, experiential