Project Background

24/08/07

Project Background

The area of product semantics and the characterisation of an individual’s emotional response, in terms of desirability, to the product when they view and use it is a relatively recent area of investigation. Much work has been conducted by Ergonomists into usability, but little has been done relating it to desirability.

Desirability may be considered to be the social and cultural functionality of the product. A number of aspects may be assessed when considering the components of emotional response to a product. The stimulus given to the person viewing then handling and using the product can be related to their response and monitored through galvanic resistance (change in sweat production in the hand); body motion; heart rate; breathing; brain activity; eye movement and dilation. Alongside quantitative monitoring, qualitative feedback can be obtained directly from the user. Many of these assessment techniques are well established fields in Ergonomics, Social Science and Psychology.

The mentioned techniques will be combined with other methods of monitoring task evaluation and performance. This will give those interested in new product development a better understanding of the emotional involvement of a consumer with a product as well as the points during the task when issues arise.

Project Objectives

Week 1	Undertake a short literature review relating to human response monitoring that include procedures for non invasive that are already approved by the University Ethics Committee.
Week 2/3	Help set up and calibrate a range of equipment with the Human Response Laboratory. The equipment is worth over £200,000.
Week 4/5	Bring together the appropriate procedures into a sequence, ready for a pilot trial with a given product. It is likely the product will be a steam iron.
Week 6/7	Following a review of the procedures by the Ethics Advisory Committee and the calibration equipment, a series of assessments with six participants will be conducted.
Week 8	Within the support of George Torrens, produce a short report that will form the basis of a Conference paper to be submitted to the Annual Conference of the Ergonomics Society.

Other results and procedures will be published though the Design Practice Research Group website, within the Department of Design and Technology.

This site was designed and created by Leighan Bleasdale 2007.

This site was last updated 24/08/07.