- Emotional impact on furniture design (action & reaction) : user-based approach (2014)
- Emotions are the most sensitive engine of everyday life as they are the daily experience of everyone. When designers can control emotions with their designs, they can communicate with users. The “first impression” is the designer-user’s first communication point; it controls users' purchase choice, as people without emotions, as in Damasio´s study, are often unable to choose between alternatives, especially if each choice appears equally valid. So, orienting the users’ first impression positively may direct their purchase decision to repurchase the product. Also, the experience with the product- especially those with long-term lifetime usage requires emotionally designed products to accommodate the negative emotions stimulated during this long time experience. Those emotionally designed products need a specific designing strategy that can fulfill users’ emotional needs to turn them into reality. Moreover, the positive emotions such as happiness, attractiveness, surprise, interest, trust, and fun need to be supported and evoked by the design from the very beginning of the design process and throughout the experience time. Norman's three levels of perception and Plutchik's wheel of emotions have been used in a research methodology to develop the design process to result in an emotionally communicative product. This method is developed based on a particular strategy, tools, and stimuli, by involving particular users in the entire design process, designing for re-configuration, and following-up on the user's relationship with products to accommodate the negative emotions that have been elicited through their experiences with the products. This method has been used to provide users with aesthetically and emotionally dynamic products that enable them recovering the positive feelings that influenced their purchase decision. An application structure was designed and used. This outline is based on identifying emotional design characteristics of a pre-specified users' target group, and then fulfilling their emotional needs by involving them in the design and product evaluation process, to ensure a user's positive first impression with pleasant surprises at purchase, and then extending this pleasure as long as possible.
- Cultural variables and their impact on the furniture design process in the era of globalization (2015)
- It is known that humans are to very large degree products of their environment; their thoughts, desires and needs are shaped by many cultural trends related to their societies, creeds and traditions, which are different according to changes in natural and environmental factors. These cultural variables depend on many issues, which differ from one place to another and from one country to another depending on environmental systems, history, language, religion, beliefs and so on. Accordingly, we can find huge differences in the cultures of people and their needs. Although designers are always keen on maintaining a certain aloofness, a certain freedom of mind, they too are subject to the cultural trends affecting their respective societies, the impacts of which will appear in their work. Designers’ thoughts and works will need to be analyzed in order to appreciate positive or negative effects, with special consideration given to current developments, especially the ongoing shrinking of the world into one “global village” under the globalization era. In many developing countries there is confusion among designers, in addition to the clear gap and the conflict between the meaning of globalization and the concept of “cultural identity” and its applications in the field of creativity. All this needs to be clarified and investigated. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to study and analyze this tangled relationship, and to make an attempt to apply an integrated vision to connect cultural concepts as variables and investigate their influence on design under the conditions of a comprehensive and widespread globalization.
