Improving wellbeing in universities: a transdisciplinary systems change approach

In order for universities to flourish, we need to ensure that their staff and students are well mentally, physically and socially. Improving wellbeing is an open, systemic and complex challenge, because it contains many interrelated and dynamic problems and concerns. Such challenges cannot be ‘solved’ by using traditional and reductionist...

The joint effect of typicality and novelty on aesthetic pleasure for product designs: Influences of safety and risk

While some studies have shown that people prefer typical product designs, others have shown that people also like product designs that are new. To reconcile these contradictory findings, the design principle, ‘Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable’ proposes that people prefer a balance of both typicality and novelty in product designs. As an explanation...

The development of a reliable and valid scale to measure aesthetic pleasure in design

There is a lack of consistency regarding the scales used to measure aesthetic pleasure. They are often chosen ad hoc or derived from other research fields but never validated for design. Moreover, those scales often do not measure aesthetic pleasure in isolation, but instead include its determinants (e.g., novelty). Therefore, we developed a...