PEOPLE SAY ONE THING, DO ANOTHER, AND POSSIBLY FEEL SOMETHING ELSE...

Products that we surround ourselves with satisfy more than mere functional needs.  Such needs can be referred to as supra-functional and can need such as the spiritual, emotional, tribal, social and cultural.  As products need to perform functionally, they need to be intuitive to use, blend in with the material landscape of the individual and provide delight. 

The language of products (product semantics) and the associated messages are contributory factors in user-product relationships, and forming emotional attachment and product bonding. We all tend to have at least one artifact that has meaning and value beyond its function or intrinsic value. For example, we may keep a leaking kettle or a chipped cup that we use every day because we are attached to them. The thought of replacing them may never occur to us because these items satisfy needs beyond the functional. In contrast, we may have functional products that remain unused. They may never see the light of day because a bond and attachment has failed to develop.  The cultural climate within the research for the designing community is beginning to embrace the importance of emotion within the design process. Users’ wants, needs, and desires may be challenging for designers to grasp.

This paper will discuss a current research project that is generating a tool by which unconscious facial expressions; body language, comments, murmurs and feedback will be captured to support more effective product development.  This empathic tool will provide a resource by which industrial and graphic designers can elicit feedback from the general public in a non-obtrusive manner.  This project will develop a means by which designers can introduce products to potential users and elicit ‘authentic’ feedback during various stages of the design process.  Such a tool will be crucial for students of design (industrial and graphics).  The proposed tool will be a specifically designed and constructed display cabinet, essentially a “smart vitri ne”, that ‘fits’ visually within the more formal museum environments, whilst also being approachable for use within other environments (e.g. design studios, public spaces).  This display cabinet system will house established, stable video and sound capture equipment that will be activated using motion and/or pressure sensors depending on the environment containing the cabinet.   The authors will report on the design process of this design research tool and share their initial research findings.