Design based on Emotional Approach Case Study: Designing a device for entertainment

The goal of this paper is application of Theoretical aspects of emotional design for designers and especially industrial designers. Nowadays a huge amount of resources for emotional design has been introduced globally; however the problem was that most of them have been based on psychological or philosophical approach and there were really few resources which would try to connect emotional based theories with design. Even those researches which carry the term emotional design, have very little to do with elements of design theory, which is based on Gestalt theory for design. We believe that this paper would be one of those pioneering steps, trying apply emotional design concepts for design. Not only this connection was tried to be conducted, but also an artifact was tried to be designed based on this approach, so the findings of the research could be evaluated by the reader. There are many reasons to work on emotional design. Nowadays in the contemporary world, emotional design approach can be considered as bridge which connects Design Science and other related fields of design; it is also considered as a powerful tool which guarantees product success and capturing the satisfaction of user. Based on this, we tried to introduce application of emotion based theories for designers. In order to reach this goal, the main elements of emotional design and the role of affecting design factors in this approach was considered and then three levels of product perception was studied based on Norman’s theory. Although we believe that Norman’s theory has a lot to do with design, however translating those three layers of emotion to Gestalt Elements is something really important, which has not been worked as an independent research program yet. We also tried to consider how the user’s emotions would be activated. The activation of user is important since the user is the final receiver of our message which could accept or deny the product designed. There were some methods introduced to see how users ‘emotions could be activated. Here we refer to two methods which was called Interpretative phenomenological analysis and scenario based design. In interpretative phenomenological analysis, the main goal was to put away any assumption which we had from outside world and then we try to interpret elements around us and we would see how surroundings have been interpreted. Findings would be useable for designers to design their own artifacts based on intuitions captured from this approach. Another method, scenario based design, is something which could offer designers possible solutions. In comparison to scientific methods, which reach one answer, scenario based design offers the designer a range of solutions. Based on this, the designer is free to choose between different solutions. Combination of these two methods would be very helpful for designers. In the end, based on those two methods, a sample of an amusement device has been designed, which offers a practical value for designers.