Personal relevance in story reading: a research review

Although personal relevance is key to sustaining an audience’s interest in any given narrative, it has received little systematic attention in scholarship to date. Across centuries and media, adaptations have been used extensively to bring temporally or geographically distant narratives “closer” to the recipient under the assumption that their impact will increase. In this review article, we review experimental and other empirical evidence on narrative processing in order to unravel which types of personal relevance are more likely to be impactful than others, which types of impact (e.g. aesthetic, therapeutic, persuasive) they have been found to generate, and where their power may become excessive or outright detrimental to reader experience

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Aesthetic Sensitivity

[eng] Aesthetic sensitivity is a central idea in the field of empirical aesthetics. The present research contributes a historical-critical review of its origin and development through the history of the discipline, a new theoretical approach aligned with current knowledge, novel methodological tools to investigate this and other relevant psychological constructs, and empirical evidence based on this conception that advances scientific understanding of sensory valuation.[spa] La sensibilidad estética es una idea central en el campo de la estética empírica. La presente investigación aporta una revisión histórico-crítica de su origen y desarrollo a través de la historia de la disciplina, un nuevo enfoque teórico de acuerdo con los conocimientos actuales, novedosas herramientas metodológicas para investigar éste y otros constructos psicológicos relevantes, y evidencia empírica basada en esta concepción que avanza la comprensión científica de la valoración sensorial.[cat] La sensibilitat estètica és una idea central en el camp de l'estètica empírica. La present investigació aporta una revisió històric-crítica del seu origen i desenvolupament a través de la història de la disciplina, un nou enfocament teòric alineat amb els coneixements actuals, noves eines metodològiques per investigar aquest i altres constructes psicològics rellevants, i evidència empírica basada en aquesta concepció que avança la comprensió científica de la valoració sensorial

Emotional Design: An Overview

Emotional design has been well recognized in the domain of human factors and ergonomics. In this chapter, we reviewed related models and methods of emotional design. We are motivated to encourage emotional designers to take multiple perspectives when examining these models and methods. Then we proposed a systematic process for emotional design, including affective-cognitive needs elicitation, affective-cognitive needs analysis, and affective-cognitive needs fulfillment to support emotional design. Within each step, we provided an updated review of the representative methods to support and offer further guidance on emotional design. We hope researchers and industrial practitioners can take a systematic approach to consider each step in the framework with care. Finally, the speculations on the challenges and future directions can potentially help researchers across different fields to further advance emotional design.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163319/1/Emotional_Design_Manuscript_Final.pdfSEL

Exploring the impact of hotel interior design through service dominant logic (SDL) and consumer culture theory (CCT) lenses

This study examined the role of interior design in a hotel context. Although the role of interior design is clear in daily life and managerial activities, little consumer research has been conducted to identify the influential elements of interior design and capture their impacts, specifically within the hotel industry. Additionally, there is limited theoretical support for the integration of design and business disciplines, and the integration of consumer culture theory (CCT) and service dominant logic (SDL) theories. Addressing these gaps, this study sought to understand the underpinnings of hotel interior design, and explain its role from the distinct perspective of cosmopolitan consumers, through servicescape, CCT and SDL lenses. Drawing on the CCT and SDL theories in this research, the perspective of value creation in SDL is combined with the meaning creation in CCT, to explore what meanings hotel interior design can convey to hotel consumers, what it means to them, and how it influences them. An interpretivist research paradigm was employed using an inductive approach, and qualitative data was collected through thirty-seven semi- structured interviews.The findings of the research have indicated that consumers perceive hotels’ interior design holistically as a first impression. However, over time and with usage experience certain design elements increase in importance relative to others (e.g. colour, lighting). Therefore the findings highlighted that the perception is formed by both the functionality and the aesthetic appearance of the interior design, and identified the most influential interior design elements. The findings also revealed that hotel interior design is very critical in forming customers’ perceptions, creating value, symbolizing meanings, and shaping their overall experience. This study is of both theoretical and managerial importance. Theoretically, this study developed the “Hotelscape” framework as the core contribution and the final outcome of the study. This framework identifies the elements that form the overall interior design of a hotel servicescape, along with their impacts on customers and hoteliers in one comprehensive framework. It also unites separate concepts such as design and business, and integrates several theories including SDL and CCT. Managerially, this study will enhance the hotel managers’ awareness of the practical value of interior design. It will help hoteliers understand their consumers better, and enable them to manipulate their service environments to differentiate their offerings through interior design. As such, this study sends an overriding message to academics and managers that the coordination between design and business is necessary and beneficial, especially in a globalized and competitive industry such as hotels

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles