Why we like to touch: Consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation explained by a balanced combination of unity and variety in product designs

Tactile experiences are a pivotal part of consumer behavior and choice. However, very little is known about why consumers esthetically appreciate touching products. The principle of Unity-in-Variety, stating that consumers like to perceive variety but only when this variety is presented as a coherent whole, has been shown to partly explain...

An application of the dual identity model and active categorization to increase intercultural closeness

The enhancement of social inclusion is a key to maintaining cohesion in society and to foster the benefits of cultural diversity. Using insights from the Dual Identity Model (DIM) with a special focus on active categorization, we develop an intervention to increase social inclusion. Our intervention encourages the participants to (re-...

Influence of social connectedness and autonomy on aesthetic pleasure for product designs

to feel connected to and autonomous from their ‘type of people’ and when product designs do they are aesthetically pleasing. From an evolutionary perspective, product designs provide aesthetic pleasure because they help direct beneficial behavior. We argue that people can fulfill their evolutionary need for safety through product designs that...

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...

Aesthetic appreciation of tactile unity-in-variety in product designs

The principle of unity-in-variety has recently been shown to affect visual aesthetic appreciation of product designs. We investigated whether this principle can also account for tactile aesthetic appreciation of products. Design students rated nine car keys on unity, variety and aesthetic appreciation through tactile exploration only. Results...

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...

The influence of unity-in-variety on aesthetic appreciation of car interiors

Product designers can use a wide range of design principles to influence the appearance of new product designs. One of these principles, ‘unity-in-variety’, states that product designs combining a maximum of unity or order with as much variety as possible are the most aesthetically pleasing. Even though designers are thought to intuitively use...

The Influence of Product Exposure on Trendiness and Aesthetic Appraisal

Designers use product attributes (e.g., trendiness) to design aesthetically appealing products. The relationships of physical properties (e.g., shape) of product designs with product attributes and aesthetic appraisal are often considered to be generalizable over product categories and markets. However, in line with an interactionist view, we...

Typically the Best? Perceived Typicality and Aesthetic Appraisal of Product Appearances

In this dissertation, it is investigated how the current knowledge that people possess about a certain product category influences perception and aesthetic appraisal of product appearances within this product category. Through the reoccurring exposure to product appearances in everyday life people form Internalized Product Appearances (IPA) of...

How consumers perceive product appearance; the identification of three product appearance attributes

The appearance attributes of designed products noted in the literature often reflect what designers themselves perceive in a product design. This present research, however, provides knowledge on how consumers perceive product appearance by identifying appearance attributes that consumers use to distinguish the appearances of durable products....

Are modern products curved or angular?: The effect of the prototype shape on the received product meaning

Managers that want to incorporate a pre-defined product meaning in a design need to know how consumers relate product properties to product meanings. In past research the proposed relationships between physical properties and meanings are implied to be robust. This study showed that the physical property ‘curvature’ has a positive effect on the...