Design for wellbeing during Covid-19: A cybernetic perspective on data feedback loops in complex socIotechnical systems

The COVID-19 pandemic has put wellbeing on the global agenda like never<br/>before. Many businesses, organizations, and even governments have recognized<br/>wellbeing as a formal policy goal. This paper addresses the question of how to design<br/>complex systems to improve the wellbeing of their stakeholders. We present a case of<br/>helping a...

Designing product metaphor to promote sustainable behaviour: A proposed method

Within the scope of Design for Sustainable Behaviour, the connection between behavioural change strategies and design idea generation has received limited attention. This paper highlights metaphorical thinking in product design to stimulate sustainable behaviour. In particular, the current study proposes a metaphor-based design method to guide...

Activities as a Gateway to Sustained Subjective Well-Being Mediated by Products

Research in positive psychology indicates that sustained well-being is more determined by our actions than by our possessions. Products' contribution to well-being may thus be grounded in their potential to support well-being-enhancing activities rather than in their material value. In a laddering study, we investigated how products shape a...

Designing with an underdeveloped computational composite for materials experience

In response to the urge for multidisciplinary development of computational composites, designers and material scientists are increasingly involved in collaborative projects to valorize these technology-push materials in the early stages of their development. To further develop the computational composites, material scientists need designer’s...

The beauty in product-service systems

Aesthetic appreciation affects the success of products in a number of areas, such as user satisfaction and usability. Hence, designers apply aesthetic principles to create more successful products. However, it is still unclear how such principles apply to the services and systems that products are often part of. In this paper, we explore how two...

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...

The combined effect of perceptual and conceptual dimensions on product design aesthetics

In design research perceptual features of a design such as unity- in-variety as well as conceptual properties (whether the design is a good instantiation of designer’s intentions) have been found to affect the aesthetic experience independently. In the course of a research design using systematic manipulations of USB stick designs in three...

Extending design leadership to innovation strategy: Roles and tools

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...

Social implication design (SID): A design method to exploit the unique value of the artefact to counteract social problems

The role of design in changing people’s behaviour and causing social implications has been referred to as an inherent aspect of design. In taking responsibility for this influence of design, emphasis is often placed on the prevention of undesired consequences rather than the realization of desired ones. Little research exists on how to exploit...

Collaborating with Design Consultancy firms for Effective Strategic Decision-Making in New Product Development

To contain risks and increase the profitability of innovation efforts, firms frequently engage in joint innovation activities with external sources of knowledge, like design consultancies. Innovation literature has given limited consideration to the strategic role that design consultancies can play in the innovation efforts of their clients. 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...

Explorations in Social Interaction Design

This one-day workshop brings together HCI scholars and practitioners who share a common interest in understanding and exploring how we will be socially connected in the future. Central to our discussion will be the exploration of an interdisciplinary research agenda in social interaction design (SxD) that merges social networks and socially...

Improving innovation strategic decision-making through the collaboration with design consultancies

Innovation and design literature have given limited consideration to the strategic role of design consultancies in the innovation processes of their clients. A plausible explanation is the difficulty to assess the quality of design consultancies’ output, given the intangibility of the output itself and the difficulty of connecting a knowledge...

Feel the art: Creating museum involvement by tapping universal human concerns

This paper reports an experience-driven design project that was commissioned by the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. The aim was to cause a shift in the relationship between visitors and the art collection from one that is experienced as ‘distant’ to one that is experienced as ‘committed’. In five steps, an online application was conceptualised, developed...