Studying emotional design in ladies wrist watches
Year: 2009
Editor: Clarke, A, Ion, W, McMahon, C and Hogarth, P
Author: Tolooei, Nata; Alanchari, Narges
Series: E&PDE
Section: DESIGN AND EMOTION
Page(s): 466-471
Abstract
Nowadays there are practical methods in emotional design. Quality Function Development (QFD) and Kansei Engineering are two methods which can be used to design emotional products. In this paper QFD and Kansei Engineering are integrated to study users' interest in product design. Firstly 100 ladies wrist watches were selected among 1350 ladies wrist watches. These 100 watches were chosen based on their differences characteristics and design. 22 properties were defined for selected watches. Then these 100 watches were clustered in 10 categories bases on the defined properties. Clustering was used to find out the most related properties for each watch. A representative watch was chosen for each category. The representative watch covered the most number of properties in each category; therefore 10 watches were selected to be studied. Kansei Engineering was employed to study the watches. According to the choice of domain in Kansei Engineering, the representative watches were studied with 12 Kansei words. The study was done by questionnaire and interview. 96 ladies, between 20-30 years of age, were selected randomly. The users' expressions were closely observed. The participants were asked to evaluate each watch on 12 Kansei words. The analyzed data showed that there is a direct relation between the users' emotions and properties of the watches. As a result for each representative watch some Kansei words were recognized. It means that Kansei words described users' emotions on each watch. Due to the findings, it was concluded that the users' emotional needs were translated to product properties.
Keywords: Emotional design, QFD, cluster analysis, Kansei, ladies watches