Towards a sensory approach for designing pleasurable user-product experiences

Abstract

Increasing competitiveness in product design is resulting in good product functionality no longer being a sufficiently effective differentiator in the market place. User’s attention is shifting to other product attributes such as the pleasurable emotions experienced during interaction. Designing for product-emotions is an emerging field in product design which is being attributed increasing importance. This paper investigates the research being conducted at the University of Malta via a research project entitled DemoHS that contributes to this field with the development of a sensation based model of product-emotions.