Investigating the relationship between customer emotions and sportsbike aesthetics

Abstract

When designing a sportsbike, design engineers need to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to develop a product which is aesthetically pleasing as well as aerodynamically optimised as possible. The objective of this research is to investigate the emotions experienced by motorcycle enthusiasts when looking at sportsbike designs. For this study, a literature review was carried out and an online questionnaire was designed with the expert input of two psychologists. The main part of the questionnaire consisted of eight motorcycle images together with a set of Emocards. The results were analysed and verified by using statistical methods. The outcomes of this study can be used to formulate a set of guidelines which can be implemented in a Knowledge Intensive Computer Aided Design (KI-CAD) system.