Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products

Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products

Russo, B.

Hekkert, P.P.M. (promotor)
Boess, S.U. (promotor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2010-12-09

People often say they love a product. What do they really mean when they say this, and is this a phenomenon that is relevant to the field of design? Findings from a preliminary study in this thesis indicated that people describe their love as a rewarding, long-term, and dynamic experience that arises from a meaningful relationship built with products they own and use. Inspired by existing approaches to the experience of love from social psychology, research tools are developed for the closer study of person-product love. Using those tools the research in this thesis investigates how person-product interactions are linked to the experience of love and how these influence love over time. The findings reveal how the experience of love arises from person-product relationships, how love relationships develop over time, and which factors can provoke change in the love experience and love relationships over time. These findings present opportunities for design researchers and designers to foster rewarding experiences and long-lasting person-product relationships. Person-product love relationships can bring emotional rewards that benefit people’s wellbeing and stimulate sustained efforts to keep loved products for longer.

Love
relationships
emotion
design
interaction

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fb4b87ce-ff66-44f3-9c81-0e7c5bfa7c78

VSSD

2010-12-18

9789065622556

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

(c) 2010 Russo, B.