Nuances of emotions in product development: Seven key opportunities identified by design professionals (original) (raw)

Products can evoke pleasurable emotions in several ways: they can be direct sources of pleasure (e.g., being inspired by a novel car), and indirect sources by facilitating pleasurable activities (e.g., enjoying the thrill of reading a scary story, which is facilitated by an e-book reader). The role of (positive and negative) emotions in human-product interaction and the benefits of design that evokes positive emotions have been discussed extensively in the design research literature (see, e.g. [Crilly et al. 2004]). The discussion shows a general acceptance of the idea that designers, and design processes, can benefit from emotion knowledge (for an overview, see [Demir 2008]), and, related to this, various models, tools and methods have been proposed that are intended to facilitate emotion-focused design processes. Although the development was driven by the motivation to support designers, it seems that not all resulting knowledge and tools have been widely accepted and used in practice. Desmet [2009] observed that most design professionals acknowledged the relevance of emotions, but at the same time many were skeptical about theoretical approach, believing that emotional aspects of product design is the exclusive domain of their intuition, and too elusive to predict. Moreover, Van Boeijen and Daalhuizen [2013] have pointed out that even though suggested emotion-focused design processes are seemingly understandable, using them in practice is difficult, requiring extensive time investments and practice. We propose that even though the tools and approaches have been developed with designers' needs in mind, they have not always been derived from the actual needs and expectations of these designers. For these reasons, the current study attempted to outline the needs and expectations of design professionals with respect to emotion knowledge by giving them the opportunity to express their view on this subject. The main research question was: in the perspective of design professionals, what are the benefits of having a nuanced understanding of positive emotions in product development processes? The obtained insights can help ensuring practical relevance when developing future tools, methods, and guidelines to support designers in incorporating emotion knowledge in their design processes. This paper begins by introducing the topic of nuances of positive emotions and the aim of study. The second section provides a brief overview of stages in product development processes and involved roles, which served as a framework for the study. The third section reports the study, and the final section discusses implications and proposals for future research.