Affective Sustainability. Is this what timelessness really means?

Sustainability is always about regard to the environment: an intelligent use of resources and not returning to nature what it cannot degrade without long-term damage. Politics, business and thus research have been predominantly concerned with the direct impact on the environment of the diverse human activities in our society. There is of course awareness about all the indirect effects caused by these activities but as these effects are more complicated to identify and calculate, it could reasonably be suggested that these have not got the same attention and hence have not been thoroughly explored. Important resources are required for the production of objects, which subsequently turn out neither to meet humans’ needs nor to fulfil their desires. This issue involves not just the misuse of resources but also the addition to waste problems. Needs and desires are not unrelated to material and function but reach mostly beyond the physicality of the object as argued by Krippendorf (2006), among others. Timelessness is unrelated to physicality and is most likely the ultimate example of sustaining. However, this phenomenon does not easily allow interpretation as it is basically philosophical, which also would complicate its transition into other domains. The deconstruction of timelessness in an earlier work (Borjesson, 2006) resulted in the phenomenon being conceptualised as affective sustainability. Four notions were identified as mainly informing timelessness: time, tradition, aesthetics and perception. When subsequently studied in several disciplines, these notions produced indicators on how to understand better what makes objects retain their significance in a changing human context. These indicators are not to be categorised as a set of tools or even less as a model to be applied in the design process: they are directional rather than normative. Moreover, they are best understood as support and inspiration to develop design thinking and have been the subject for further analysis as part of continued research. This has increased the clarity of the directions not only in relation to design thinking but also where to continue research. Keywords: Sustainability, Human ways of living, Human ways of being, Lived and Learned experience, Emotion, Affect, Feeling, Cognition.</p

Metaphors and Emotions in Advertising: A Rhetorical Analysis of Audi’s Online Video Commercials

Advertising often employs metaphor because of its rhetorical utility. By drawing on analogous imagery and language, metaphor has the potential to elicit emotional responses. As the digital age is increasingly saturated with commercial messaging, advertising experts leverage the persuasive power of metaphor and emotion to produce creative, compelling, and memorable commercials. German automobile company Audi employs metaphorical language and imagery in their video advertisements to arouse consumer emotions. In this study, I conduct rhetorical analyses of Audi’s online video commercials in order to: identify instances in their ads that employ metaphorical language and imagery; investigate how those metaphors function rhetorically; and discuss the complex rhetorical interplay between metaphor and emotion. My findings suggest that Audi leverages the power of metaphor to build audiences’ emotional investment in the brand, and therefore, be more likely to purchase Audi vehicles

From decoding a graph to processing a multimodal message: Interacting with data visualization in the news media

publishedVersio

"I wouldn't choose that key ring; it's not me": A design study of cherished possessions and the self

Copyright © 2016 ACM. We each possess certain objects that are dear to us for a variety of reasons. They can be sentimental to us, bring us delight through their use or empower us. Throughout our lives, we use these cherished possessions to reaffirm who we are, who we were and who we wish to become. To explore this, we conducted a design study that asked ten participants to consider their emotional attachment towards and the identity-relevance of cherished and newly introduced possessions. Participants were then asked to elaborate on their responses in interviews. Through a thematic analysis of these responses, we found that the emotional significance of possessions was reportedly influenced by both their relevance to selfhood and position within a life story. We use these findings to discuss how the design of new products and systems can promote emotional attachment by holding a multitude of emotionally significant meanings to their owners

Experiential Metaphors: Create Anti-negative Home Products

Experiential metaphor is a user-centered design approach and methodology that I developed for my thesis project. This approach can be applied to a design to influence a user\u27s perception or design process to facilitate the designer\u27s concept ideation. The intention of this approach is to create a pleasurable product experience and a positive emotional response through interaction with the product and interpretation of its meaning. Grounded in meaning association, which is correlated with non-linguistic cognitive metaphor and human emotional models, four different levels of experiential metaphor are formed by the synthesis of the metaphor structure and levels of emotional elicitation. The design of these two application projects demonstrate the value of experiential metaphor in successful design. Meanwhile, the challenges and limitation are discovered and can be a useful reference to design methodology execution

Designing objects with meaningful associations

Objects often become cherished for their ties to beliefs, experiences, memories, people, places or values that are significant to their owner. These ties can reflect the ways in which we as humans use objects to characterise, communicate and develop our sense of self. This paper outlines our approach to applying product attachment theory to design practices. We created six artefacts that were inspired by interviews conducted with three individuals who discussed details of their life stories. We then evaluated the associations that came to mind for our participants when interacting with these newly designed artefacts to determine whether these links brought meaning to them. Our findings highlight the potential of design to bring emotional value to products by embodying significant aspects of a person’s self-identity. To do so, designers must consider both the importance and authenticity of the associations formed between an object and an individual

Control / contrôle: comparing discourses of power and rebellion in hair care products

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Since the Antiquity, female hair has been a powerful social semiotic, used to determine women's sexuality, mental states, and adherence to gender norms. As a result of this extensive signifying power, many disciplinary practices have evolved to regulate female hair. In this thesis, I use critical discourse analysis methods to determine what ideologies are present on consumer hair care products. I investigate a selection of products found within a Fairbanks, AK beauty store, analyzing the English and French text on the labels. The results of this analysis show that hair product labels directly address the disciplinary practices that circulate through our culture, often referencing control, aggression, and defensive relationships. The language to evoke control is modified slightly between Anglo-American and French and Franco-Canadian contexts, with the former more likely to use managerial terms in the discourse. Hair product labels also appropriate language of resistance, ultimately creating an adversarial relationship between the consumer and nature