Designing burial monuments to increase emotional awareness in product design
Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Stoltenberg, Einar; Berg, Arild
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science, Norway
Section: Emotion/Senses
Page(s): 704-709
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1
Abstract
The motivation for writing this paper is the growing concern in society towards the amount of products we produce containing low utility and sustainability. Through emotional awareness the student can design meaningful artifacts which extend being more than consumer goods. The hypothesis is that Product Design students designing burial monuments increase their awareness of emotional and meaningful artifacts, and increase their emotional awareness in the design process. Twenty students worked designing burial monuments for a stonemasonry. Their design process was researched trough use of archival studies and participatory observations. The study shows the theme affected the students emotionally, which again influenced their design process. The research indicates that designing burial monuments led to an increased emotional awareness for the majority of students participating in the project.
Keywords: Burial monuments, emotional design, emotional awareness, product semantics, user attachment