How Do Semantic Clues Affect People's Perceptions of Products with Multiple Meanings

DS 116: Proceedings of the DESIGN2022 17th International Design Conference

Year: 2022
Editor: Mario Štorga, Stanko Škec, Tomislav Martinec, Dorian Marjanović
Author: Yulan Zhong, Ryuta Takawaki, Etsuko T. Harada
Series: DESIGN
Institution: University of Tsukuba, Japan
Section: Industrial Design
Page(s): 2253-2262
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2022.228
ISSN: 2732-527X (Online)

Abstract

A psychological experiment was conducted to explore the relationship between design features of physical controllers and perceived multiple meanings or possible operations by users. In particular, we focused on affordances and informatives, two semantic clues derived from product semantics, to find out how these clues affect users’ perceptions. The results indicated that both desired shapes, text, and icon could encourage and discourage the perception of specific operations. Those empirical data could be useful for product designers in communicating effectively with users through their products.

Keywords: product design, user experience, evaluation