Journaling memorable and meaningful tourism experiences: A strengths-based approach to technology-mediated reminiscence

Reminiscing on memorable travel experiences is a common practice amongst many travellers. This study introduces positive psychology interventions – cultivation of character strengths and savouring strategies - to examine memorable and meaningful tourism experiences (MMEs). Although both interventions aim to increase well-being, little...

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...

Prototyping materials experience: Towards a shared understanding of underdeveloped smart material composites

Over the past years, product designers have been involved in collaborative developments of smart material composites early on in the development process, to showcase creative applications of them. In these projects, the way the material is presented to the development team and the extent to which its properties are defined affect how...

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...

How People’s Appreciation of Products Is Affected by Their Knowledge of the Designers’ Intentions

Products result from processes that are guided by designers’ intentions for what the products should be, what they should be like and what they should do. People might infer these intentions more or less accurately from the products’ form, or they might learn about them from a variety of sources such as advertisements and other marketing...

Noisy products: Does appearance matter?

Noisiness is an important product experience that is not restricted to the auditory properties of products; bright colors and cluttered visual patterns can also be experienced as noisy. The aim of this study was to determine to what extent the overall product noisiness is attributed to the sounds that the products make and to what extent is it...

Measuring and adapting behavior during product interaction to influence affect

Sometimes, the way in which we interact with products implicitly communicates how we feel. Based on previous studies on how emotions can be detected and communicated via product interaction, we discuss how an interactive product could influence affect by responding and changing behaviors expressing affect. We discuss the proposal of the...

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...

Assessing emotion in interaction: Some problems and a new approach

This paper reviews some of the tools available for the measurement of emotion in product design. These tools are organized using the five components of emotion: feelings, expression, behavior, physiological activation and appraisal. Several problems specific to the measurement of user experience during interaction with products are also...

Framework of product experience

In this paper, we introduce a general framework for product experience that applies to all affective responses that can be experienced in human-product interaction. Three distinct components or levels of product experiences are discussed: aesthetic experience, experience of meaning, and emotional experience. All three components are...