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Applied Ergonomics 37 (2006) 409418 www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo

Embracing diversity in user needs for affective design

Halimahtun M. Khalid
Damai Sciences Sdn Bhd, Jalan Stesen Sentral 5, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract To develop product portfolios and affective design we need to understand the diversity in user needs. The challenge is how to predict what users want and how they will behave. One approach is to understand user emotions and affective needs, and predict successful product design that can match the needs. This paper discusses affect and its link to cognition. To provide a context, several theories are presented. A framework is described that incorporates characteristics of users, tasks, products, and use environment. The goal is to highlight the importance of emotions in enhancing the value of products. This research eld, which we call Hedonomics, is new. There are many challenges in developing valid and reliable measurements of affect, which can inuence human factors research as well as design. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Affect; Needs diversity; Product design

1. Diversity and design Diversity can be dened as the characteristics which differentiate people as individuals, as well as the characteristics which make them alike. These oppositional denitions can be traced to the term diversity; in Middle English, divers(e) means sundry, several, many and in Old French divers and Latin diversus means different, contrary, separate, to turn aside, divert (Bitterman and Tauke, 2005). We have inherited a term with multiple and contradictory interpretations. On the one hand, diversity is considered to indicate variety and multiformity; on the other, it is associated with the quality of being different. In product design, diversity assumes at least two roles in these relationships: it can build assurances of variety and choice into its processes and products, and it can also be the source or catalyst for change. There are many dimensions in human diversity. They go beyond obvious differences such as race, gender, age, physical abilities, and marital status. Less obvious dimensions include: education, lifestyle, national origin, religious or political afliation, organizational culture, and operator skills. Understanding diversity adds value in product design and use.
0003-6870/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2006.04.005

1.1. Needs diversity User populations are becoming more diverse, and it is difcult to identify a prototypical user. Diversity in this sense refers to the variety in user needs. Needs diversity involves accommodating users with different skills, knowledge, age, gender, disabilities, disabling conditions (mobility, sunlight, noise), literacy, culture, income, and so on (Schneiderman, 2000). For example, in designing a web site interface, there is a need to consider the users computing skills and knowledge. Design of search engines can include basic and advanced dialogue boxes. Segmentation of web pages can accommodate users with poor reading skills and different languages, an e-commerce site can display multiple language versions of a product catalogue and description tuned to regional requirements. A more difcult problem is to accommodate differences in income, culture, religion, as well as disabilities and different capabilities of users. Cognitively impaired users with learning disabilities and poor memory can be accommodated with modest changes in layout and control vocabulary. Expert and frequent users too have special needs. Enabling customization that speeds high-volume users, macros to support repeated operations, and inclusion of special-purpose devices could benet many.

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1.2. User emotion in product design Traditional cognitive approaches to product usability tend to underestimate the inuence of emotions. Not surprisingly, the success of a product in the marketplace may be determined by its aesthetic appeal, the pleasure it creates and the satisfaction it brings to the user (Khalid and Helander, 2004; Helander and Khalid, 2006). Consequently, emotions and affect have received much attention over the recent years. Because emotion is a necessary part of life, affecting how we feel, behave and think; it has gained signicant attention in product design (Desmet, 2003; Khalid and Helander, 2006). According to the theory of rhetoric (Buchanan, 1989), a design argument comprises three interrelated elements which provide the substance and form of design communication: technological reasoning, character, and emotion. Technological reasoning is based on two premises: an understanding of the natural and scientic principles underlying the construction of objects for use, and knowledge of the attitudes and values of potential users and the physical conditions of actual use. It is developed with an audience of potential users in mind. The second element, character, reects the way designers choose to represent themselves in the objects they create. An object could have an authoritative appearance, which can be achieved through qualities such as intelligence, virtue, and trustworthiness. The third element, emotion, is particularly important to the semantics of products because it can be derived from both physical contact with the product and from active contemplation of it before, during, and after use. Emotions are important in product semantics (e.g., Alcantara et al., 2005). Emotions in using an artifact depend on what the artifact means or implies to the user. This is called product semantics (Krippendorff, 2006). The semantics of use could entail happy memories of the past (from looking at a photograph) or for projections for future events (such as a picnic basket). Affective quality is the ability of a product to cause changes in ones core affect (Zhang and Li, 2005). Whereas core affect exists within the person (Russell, 2003), affective quality exists in the stimulus. That is, objects, places, and events all have affective quality; they enter consciousness only as they are affectively interpreted (Zhang and Li, 2005). 1.3. Aim of paper The main purpose of this paper is to summarize human factors issues in affective design. Affective design should be theoretically driven and empirically grounded, with valid and reliable measures of affect. However, space constraint precludes discussion of methods, which are discussed in Helander and Khalid (2006). The paper is structured into four parts. First, the concepts of affect and pleasure are dened. This requires

an understanding of the coupling between affect and cognition. The terms affect and emotion are used interchangeably throughout. Second, select theories from the domains of psychology are discussed to understand the theoretical bases of human emotion. Third, a systems approach to evaluation of affective design is proposed that considers characteristics of users, tasks, products, and use environment. The last part highlights research issues that warrant further investigation. 2. Affect and pleasure There are various denitions and classications of affect and pleasure in marketing, product design, and psychology (Khalid and Helander, 2006). Russell (2003) dened core affect as a neurophysiological state that is consciously accessible as a simple, non-reective feeling. It is an integral blend of hedonic/valence or pleasure/displeasure; and arousal/activation; the extent to which one is feeling engaged or energized. Tiger (1992) identied four conceptually distinct types of pleasure from a product; Helander and Khalid (2006) extended the taxonomy to ve. Whether they are used as a source for pleasure depends on the needs of the individual. 1. Physical pleasure has to do with the body and the senses. It includes things like feeling good physically (e.g., eating, drinking), pleasure from relief (e.g., sneezing, sex), as well as sensual pleasures (e.g., touching a pleasant surface). 2. Sociopleasures include social interaction with family, friends and coworkers. This includes the way we are perceived by others, our persona, and status. 3. Psychological pleasure has to do with pleasures of the mindreective as well as emotional. It may come from doing things that interest and engage us (e.g., playing in an orchestra, or listening to a concert), including being creative (e.g., painting) or enjoying the creativity of other people. 4. Reective pleasure has to do with reection on our knowledge and experiences. The value of many products comes from this and includes aesthetics and quality. 5. Normative pleasure has to do with societal values such as moral judgment, caring for the environment, and religious beliefs. These can make us feel better about ourselves when we act in line with the expectation of others as well as our beliefs. According to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), pleasure is a good feeling coming from satisfaction of homeostatic needs like hunger, sex, and bodily comfort. This is different from enjoyment, which is a good feeling coming from breaking through the limits of homeostasis of peoples experiences, such as performing in an athletic event, or playing in a string quartet. Enjoyment can lead to more personal growth and long-term happiness than

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pleasure, but people usually prefer pleasure over enjoyment, maybe because it is less effortful. Extending this to products, Jordan (2002) dened pleasure as the emotional and hedonic benets associated with product use, while Coelho and Dahlman (2000) dened displeasure as the emotional and hedonic penalties associated with product use. This implies that to understand pleasure we need to understand displeasure as well. For example, chair comfort deals with feeling relaxed, while chair discomfort is about poor biomechanics. The two entities cannot be measured on a singular scale. In understanding comfort there is little we can learn from discomfort; they are two different dimensions (Helander and Zhang, 1997). Similarly, displeasure operates like a design constraintwe know what to avoidbut that does not mean that we understand how to design a pleasurable product. Getting rid of displeasure does not necessarily generate pleasure. Therefore, how does the brain give rise to positive affective reactions to sensory pleasure? This requires knowing which brain systems are activated by pleasant stimuli, and which systems actually cause positive affective properties (Berridge, 2003). Contemporary affective neuroscience has been preoccupied with negative affect over positive emotions. A review of the psychological literature on emotions by Fredrickson (1998) showed that positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love that share a pleasant subjective feeling have been marginalized in research as compared to negative emotions. This is because positive emotions are few in number and rather diffuse; while negative emotions pose problems that demand attention. For example, anger and its management have been implicated in the etiology of heart disease. Research has shown that even moderate uctuations in positive feelings (emotions) systematically affect cognitive processing. Isen (1999) found that mild positive affect improves creative problem solving, facilitates recall of neutral and positive material, and systematically changes strategies used in decision-making tasks. Despite these documented effects, there are few theories of how positive affect inuences cognition. To form a theory of positive affect, one must understand what makes people happy. 2.1. Coupling of affect and cognition The correlation between affect and cognition is well documented, but has largely been dismissed by cognitive psychology. Separating emotion from cognition is a major weakness of psychology and cognitive science (Vygotsky, 1962). The dopaminergic theory of positive affect postulated by Ashby et al. (1999) assumes that during periods of mild positive affect, there is a concomitant increased dopamine release in the mesocorticlimbic system. The resulting elevated dopamine levels improve performance on a variety

of cognitive functions and tasks including: episodic memory, working memory and creative problem solving. Emotional reactions typically involve extensive cognitive processing (Ellsworth and Scherer, 2003). Fig. 1 denotes the relationship between affect and cognition. While affect refers to feeling responses, cognition is used to interpret, make sense of, and understand user experience. People perceive reality in at least two ways; one is affective (intuitive and experiential) and the other is cognitive (analytical and rational) (Epstein, 1994). Formal decision-making relies on the analytical and cognitive abilities; unfortunately, this mode is slow. The experiential/ affective system is much quicker. When a person seeks to respond to an event, there will be an automatic search and matching with the experiential data base. This is like searching a memory bank for related events, including their emotional valence and implications (Epstein, 1994). Emotions are not a cause of irrational thinking; they can motivate a passionate concern for objectivity. Rational thinking entails feelings, and affective thinking entails cognition. Rational thinking is more precise, comprehensive, and insightful than irrational thinking. However, it is also emotional. New breakthroughs in neuroscience using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) validate the assertions that cognition and emotions are unied and contribute to the control of thought and behaviour conjointly and equally (LeDoux, 1995). Additionally, cognition contributes to the regulation of emotion. Contemporary views in articial intelligence are also embracing an integrated view of emotion and cognition. In Emotion Machine, Minsky (2005) claimed: Our traditional idea is that there is something called thinking and that it is contaminated, modulated or affected by emotions. What I am saying is that emotions arent separate. 3. Theoretical bases of affect Several theories in psychology underlie affect, and can provide directions for future research and methods development. Below we present a select few.

Fig. 1. Coupling of affect and cognition (Helander and Khalid, 2006).

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3.1. Activity theory In human activity theory, the basic unit of analysis is work activity. Human activities are driven by needs, where people wish to achieve a certain purpose (Bannon and Bdker, 1991). An activity is usually mediated by one or more instruments or tools, such as a photographer using a camera. Thus, the concept of mediation is central to activity theory. Leontjev (1978) distinguished between three different types of cognitive activities: (1) simple activity, which corresponds to automated stimulusresponse, (2) operational activity, which entails perception and an adaptation to the existing conditions, and (3) intellectual activity, which makes it possible to evaluate and consider alternative activities. For each of the cognitive stages there are corresponding emotional expressions: affect, emotion, and sentiments. Affect is an intensive and relatively short-lasting emotional state. For instance, as I walk down colourful Bukit Bintang Road in Kuala Lumpur and look at items displayed in the shop windows, there are instantaneous reactions to the displayed items. Most of these reactions are unconscious, and I have no recollection of them afterwards. Through affect, we can monitor routine events. Many events are purely perceptual and do not require decision making, but there is an affective matching to events that are stored in memory. This helps in understanding and interpreting their signicance. Emotions are conscious. When I stop to look at an item in the shop window, I am aware of why I stopped. Emotions go beyond the single situation; there are associations to other experiences. Emotions typically remain in memory for one or several days. Sentiments or attitudes are longer lasting and include intellectual and aesthetic sentiments (Leontjev, 1978), which affect my attitude to the items that are displayed. I know from experience that some stores are impossible; on the other hand, there are a few that are clearly very interesting. Sentiments and attitudes are learned responses. Predicting affect, which is a basic and simple response, is likely to be easier than predicting emotions and sentiments, which are more complex. To evoke affective reactions in a user, an artifact can be designed to provide people with a variety of sudden and unexpected changes (visual or auditory) that cause excitement or alarm. Designing toys for children has given us ideas about such design space. This does not imply that there will be conscious emotions or longer-lasting sentiments. The amusement park environment, with a variety of visual and auditory stimuli, is easy to design; that does not mean that people like it. 3.2. Pleasures of the mind

of the mind are different from basic emotions. They are not accompanied by any distinctive facial expression. Take for example, a person viewing the painting of Mona Lisa. The viewer may feel elated, but nothing is revealed on his/her face, and there is no distinctive physiological response. Likewise there are usually no physiological reactions from pleasures of the mind. The heart does not beat faster; there are no sympathetic or parasympathetic reactions. This is quite different from social interaction, such as a conversation with a colleague at work, where the message is in the persons face, and we can expect physiological reactions. To measure reactions to pleasures-of-the-mind one cannot use either physiological measures or facial expressions; one is left with subjective measures. There is nothing wrong with subjective methods such as interviews and questionnaires. There is however a problem in validating what questions should be asked to assess product affect. 3.3. Reversal theory Arousal is a general drive rooted in the central nervous system. According to arousal theories, organisms uctuate slightly about a single preferred point. Reversal theory, on the other hand, assumes that people have two preferred states of arousal, and they frequently switch or reverse between them (Apter, 1989). The theory therefore posits bistability rather than homeostasis. In a low arousal statecalled telicthe low arousal condition is preferred, and high arousal is experienced as unpleasant. In the high, paratelic, arousal statelow arousal is experienced as boring and unpleasant, and high arousal as exciting and pleasant. A given level of arousal may therefore be experienced as either positive or negative. One may experience a quiet Sunday afternoon as serene or dull. One may also experience a crowded and noisy party as exciting or anxiety provoking. The perceived level of pleasantness, or hedonic tone, is different for the two states. The paratelic state is characterized as arousal-seeking and the telic state as arousal-avoiding. In the telic state, people are goal oriented and serious-minded and try to nish their current activity to attain their goal. On the other hand, to have a good time, the paratelic state is appropriate. Goals and achievements are not of interest; this is the time to have fun. The reversal theory may complicate design. Should we design for the quiet, telic state or for the arousing paratelic state? Will customers be in the appropriate state when we ask them to evaluate products? How can a telic mind appreciate a paratelic product? 3.4. Affect heuristic

The notion of the pleasures of the mind dates back to Epicurus (341270 BC) who regarded pleasures of the mind as superior to pleasures of the body because they are more varied and durable. Kubovy (1999) argued that pleasures

There has been much research on how people make decisions in real life. It turns out that people usually do not try to maximize the outcome of the decisions by calculating

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values and probabilities. The short-term memory cannot hold all the gures and the memory capacity is exceeded. There are common ways of coping with memory overload in decisionsnamely to use heuristics or rules-of-thumb; people try to wing decisions. In most cases the quality of this decision making is good enough; there is rarely a need in daily life for exacting decisions (Gilovich et al., 2002). Slovic et al. (2002) in proposing the affect heuristic claimed that many decisions are based on emotional criteria. One example is the Prospect Theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), which postulates that the negative utility of a monetary loss is large, but the positive utility of a corresponding gain is fairly small; people hate to lose money but gaining is not so important. This Nobel Prize winning theory remains valid, but the argument for the theory has now changed from logic to emotion (Slovic et al., 2002). The analytic system uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculations, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The experiential system is not very accessible to conscious awareness but is intuitive, fast, and mostly automatic. One challenge is to understand how information systems can be designed so that they appeal to the emotional and experiential system with fast and intuitive processing of information as a result, see Fig. 1.

may be necessary to use several scales to measure each of the ve concepts in Hancock et al.s (2005) model. 4. Framework for affective design evaluation Affect encompasses mood, emotions, and feelings, and is the customers psychological response to the design details of the product. Pleasure is the emotion that accompanies the acquisition or possession of something good or desirable (Demirbilek and Sener, 2003). Affect is a fundamental condition for development of beliefs, values, and judgment. For this reason one can argue that to be credible, a model of the design process must include affect. Until recently, the affective aspects of designing and design cognition have been largely absent from formal theories of design process. 4.1. The affective user-designer model The systems model in Fig. 2 provides a framework for human factors issues that must be addressed in affective design. The purpose of the model is to illustrate how a designer may achieve affective design and how the user of the design will perceive and react to the design. There are two parts of the model: the designers environment and the affective user. In the designers environment there are three main subsystems: artifact, context of use, and society trends. In the artifact subsystem the designed object can incorporate several attributes that can cause a change in user affect through its affective quality (Zhang and Li, 2005). Design characteristics that can lead to emotional responses include visceral, behavioural, and reective (Norman, 2004). The designer needs to consider and if possible predict the users needs and reaction to all three aspects. Visceral design appeals to the perceptual senses. It deals with appearance. Although there are no rm guidelines for visceral design, much is known from arts and graphics about what constitutes good design: the golden ratio, symmetry, appropriate use of colors, and visual balance (the use of white space). A beautiful face, a sunset, and rolling hills are examples of this. Everybody seems to agree on this aspect of affective design (Norman, 2004). Behavioural design focuses on what a person can do with an object. If the object affords manipulation, we can develop good design rules. This is where most of the activity in HCI and the usability community is directed. Behavioural design also incorporates Csikszentmihalyis (1990) concept of ow. An example is when a person manipulates the controls in a computer game. While turning a knob or touching a control the user feels fully in control, and the device always responds as expected. Artists rarely talk about this because their focus is on visual appearance. To them the visual appearance of an interface is more important than the smoothness of operating controls.

3.5. Hierarchy of needs According to Maslow (1968), people have a hierarchy of needs that are ordered from physiological (e.g., eating), safety, love/belonging, esteem, to self actualization. The hierarchy is usually depicted as a pyramid, and it is used to predict how needs are prioritized; once a person has fullled a need at a lower level he or she can progress to the next level. To satisfy the need for self actualization, a person would have to fulll the lower four needs, which Maslow (1968) referred to as deciency needs. These needs are different in nature to self actualization. The hierarchy is not a strict progression: individuals may deemphasize some needs and emphasize others. Hancock et al. (2005) presented a similar hierarchy of needs for ergonomics and hedonomics. The ergonomic needs address safety, functionality, and usability; in Maslows reasoning these would be deciency needs. The two upper levels, pleasure and individuation, deal with self actualization. Individuation, at the top of the pyramid, is concerned with ways in which a person customizes his or her engagement and priorities, thereby optimizing pleasure as well as efciency. One may question if there is really a hierarchy, or if the elements are independent of each other. If so, there would not be a progression from bottom to top, but rather in parallel. Helander and Zhang (1997) found that comfort and discomfort are orthogonal concepts, and it is necessary to use two different scales to measure them. Similarly, it

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Fig. 2. Framework for affective design evaluation (After Helander and Khalid, 2006).

Reective design considers a designer (or users) thoughts and evaluations of the current design. This is intellectually driven. It is inuenced greatly by the knowledge and experience of the designer (user), including the persons culture and idiosyncrasies. In judging taste and fashion, people of different cultures think differently; it all depends on upbringing, traditions, needs and expectations. Some of the best reective designs are loved by some and hated by others. Such contrasts may be desirable, since controversial designs have often proven to be very successful. This is where the skills and intuition of designers play a large part. One example is Volkswagen Bora; user evaluations include: great looks, stupid looks, looks like a baby, not masculine enough, no prestige, environmentally friendly, beautiful symmetry. Constraints and lters. The next issue in the designers environment deals with design constraints and lters. These are marked in Fig. 2, with dashed lines connecting the context of use and society. In the evaluation of an artifact, a designer will consider the context of use and the context of activity of the artifact. For example, will the product be used at work or at home? At work, the aesthetics of an ofce chair is less important than pleasant interactions with colleagues. At home, however, a chair with an inspired design may be a means to express ones personality through aesthetic preferences. In addition, the designer must also consider society trends, norms and fashions. These aspects operate like constraints and modify the design of the artifact. The context of use can be understood through a task analysis. This is a tool often applied in human factors. For example, the design team for the new Duet washer and dryer, manufactured by Whirlpool, applied cognitive task analysis to analyze the context of use and needs of housewives. Although the product is twice as expensive

as other washers/dryers, it sells extremely well. The users are very happy with the design, and housewives are getting together for laundry parties. The context of use is sometimes difcult to predictwho could have predicted the laundry parties? The context of use is therefore not easy to consider in design. Peoples experiences result from motivated action in a context; as such the designer can neither know nor control the users experience. Similarly, it is not always possible to predict needs, motivation, context, and action which are relevant for the creation of user experience, leading to design features of an artifact. Moreover, people have different motivations and needs for using a product. Take for example the mobile phone: to keep in touch with loved ones, be efcient at work, and avoid boredom. In addition, there are value-added characteristics such as camera, games, short messaging system (SMS), alarm clock, and Internet connections. Besides, the phone is used in many different contexts: while commuting to work, at home, in recreation, and so on. Use of new digital products is like a scenario for situated cognitionthe context of use will determine the user experience (Suchman, 1987). It may be impossible to predict the use of the artifact in the individual case. The designers goal, then, should be to design products that support user creativity in using the product. Equip the mobile phone with many features; it is up to the user to test them and decide what is important. 4.2. Needs structure of the affective user In Fig. 2, there are two simultaneously operating systems for evaluating design: an affective system and a cognitive system. These are both inuenced by differences in needs and other idiosyncratic characteristics (knowledge,

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education, gender, etc.). An experienced person will see things differently compared to an inexperienced person, resulting in different decisions. The need for affect varies greatly among people. Some persons have a well-developed sense of aesthetics and will seek opportunities to satisfy their needs for beautiful things. Other people do not care about aesthetics. Some individuals have a need to prove their virtuosity in games and will take challenges as opportunities arise. They will seek to develop great skills so that the game will ow effortlessly. Thus, a persons need structure is essential for purposeful activity. The needs of individuals therefore drive design. Needs, however, are diverse among different persons. The need for virtuosity is a proven basic human need (Kubovy, 1999). An act is performed with virtuosity when it is difcult for most people to do but is carried out with ease and economy. This is what drives many of us to play computer games. However, virtuosity as a source of pleasure does not require extraordinary performance. Kubovy (1999) made reference to a situation where a person learned to improvise jazz on the piano over a period of six years; despite the slow development it was a very satisfactory experience. Take another scenario, a skiing resort. While waiting in the lift lines, the latest fashion in skiing outt and equipment will be much appreciated, but the activity of skiing cannot be displayed, so it is not relevant. While skiing downhill, a great skiing performance with superb control and ow is admired, but in this case, a trendy outt is beside the point. On the basis of customer needs, designers select, organize, and size product design variables to satisfy these needs. Information about the needs may be gauged from different consumer groups. Nevertheless, customer needs are difcult to capture. Based on sales patterns and customer surveys, an existing product may be rened. For seasoned products such as cars, radios, and mobile phones, customer needs are well understood because of the past sales record. Companies may improve such products in incremental steps, and customers follow along. However, for a new product it may not be possible to predict sales with any accuracy. One common example is software design. A new software version 1.0 is put on the market

without many expectations, but there will be future upgrades once the sales patterns and customer needs are understood. A common problem is that although prospective customers may respond in a survey that they like to buy a product, they may change their minds at the time of purchase. There is a long mental step between intention and behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1972). Hence, the information on customer needs may be sketchy, and designers may proceed by ignoring customer needs and estimate functional requirements as well as they can. The mapping from the designers environment to the affective user (Fig. 2) will then be based on incomplete information.

4.3. The consumer process In addition to affective evaluation, the process of buying a product is inuenced by two affective processes: (1) affective matching of needs, and (2) affective matching of personal utility, see Fig. 3. In the rst instance a customer compares the features of alternative products to his/her perceived needs. At the same time the customer considers constraints that eliminate many products due to price, suitability, and aesthetics design. Assume that you are buying a shirt for a friend. You will consider the price, size, style, and colour. You will try to imagine how well it ts to his personal needs and if he will appreciate the shirt. This emotional matching also occurs when you buy a shirt or a blouse for yourself, except the process may have become familiar to the extent that it is automated, and you may not consciously reect on all the details; the evaluation process is quicker and partly subconscious. While you are aware of why you like something, you may not reect on why you reject an item. Consider going through a rack of blouses in a store. The rejection of an item may take only a second. The affective matching of a blouse is a pattern matching process with well-developed criteria for aesthetics and suitability. The constraint lter helps in decision making by eliminating alternatives. Some products are rejected at an early stage. This can happen for many reasons: the price is too high, the colour is ugly, or the quality is poor. A quick

Fig. 3. The consumer process.

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decision is made to reject the product and consider the next product. If the product is accepted, there will be a trial adoption. A customer may try a blouse or a shirt. A second affective matching takes place, where the personal utility and the benet-cost of the purchase are judged. There can be three decision outcomes: reject (search for another product), accept (pay and leave), or give up (walk out of the store). 5. Discussion Products elicit emotions; some products elicit much emotion, such as art and clothing, and others less, such as groceries and consumer goods. Designers must consider affect and emotion in design. Emotional responses induce customers to select a particular product among many; thereby inuencing the purchase decision. In practice, user emotions toward products are well established and sometimes difcult to manipulate. As such, emotion may be the strongest differentiator in user experience. It triggers both conscious and unconscious responses to a product or an interface. There are many important reasons to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions. Understanding and reducing users anxiety and fears (negative emotions) will help in increasing product satisfaction. Poor usability will also induce negative responses such as frustration, annoyance, anger, and confusion. In evaluating the effect of emotions on purchase behaviour, we must also consider that even a moderate increase in positive emotions will improve cognitive processing. A happy person has an open mind, while a negative person is restrained. Products with positive user experiences and emotions can be more important to the customer than gains in productivity and effectiveness. Negative emotions from poor design and poor usability must denitely be avoided in product design. However, emotion is not an exclusive factor in dening a successful user experience. Every single product feature affects the user experience which is complex and multifaceted. Furthermore, emotions are culturally specic and variable. There is no such thing as a neutral interface; any design will elicit emotions from the user and the designer (Gaver, 1996). The designer should aim to control the user experience through a deliberate design effort, thus bridging the gap between the affective user and the designers environment, as outlined in the framework (Fig. 2). Providing ow. Much research and design experiences bear witness to the fact that it does not make sense to separate emotion from cognition. Instead, an integrated view of emotion and cognition is taking hold; not only in research but also in product design. A product should be designed to support customer needs, including the customers persona and needs prole. This can be done in several ways: by providing owor ease of usein interacting with the product. Application software with intuitive and adaptive controls enables good ow; quick

moves and control, and situation awarenessthe ability to forecast what will happen next. Thereby, the software induces positive emotions of fun, enjoyment, and satisfaction. The pleasures derived from seamless interaction and usable functions are hedonic benets that enhance the skillful and condent user. They also enhance the sense of virtuosity in interaction; a common need among users. A poorly designed application with complex user interface and controls impedes natural interaction, inducing negative emotions, a desire to quit, moodiness, and sometimes swearing at the machine, or even kicking it. Hedonic penalties lead to sentiments of anger and frustration (Luczak et al., 2003). Pleasurable interaction may be derived by integrating adaptability into designs and providing design features that enhance user control. In sum, customers tend to make decisions based on their feelings, perceptions, values and reections. These are based on emotional evaluations rather than logic and rational thinking. 5.1. Research issues Affective appreciation is of course not newjust the research. People have affective reactions toward tasks, artifacts, and interfaces. These are caused by design features that operate either through the perceptual system (looking at) or from a sense of controlling (touching and activating) or from reection and experience. These reactions are difcult if not impossible to control; the limbic system in the brain is in operation whether we want it or not. They are in operation whenever we look at beautiful objects, and they are particularly obvious when we try emotional matching, such as buying clothes or selecting a birthday card for someone else. Measuring affective responses to designed objects can be problematic. Further research is needed to develop measurement tools and to validate expressions of emotions that are useful for design. Several issues warrant further research, and below we summarize some of the earlier points. 1. Lack of facial and physiological signals. Pleasures of the mind are not accompanied by any distinctive facial expression (Kubovy, 1999). This is different from social interaction, where half of the message is in the persons face. Since it is problematic to use physiological measures or facial expressions, one is left with subjective measures. There is nothing wrong with subjective methods; the data comes directly from the user. In many instances, verbal or written reports provide the most valuable information. The data is, however, limited to what can be reported; sentiments concerning automated action and user expertise are difcult to solicit. 2. Design for context of use and activity. A product is used in a contextan envelope of semantics of usage

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5.

6.

surrounds the product (Alcantara et al., 2005). Products communicate with users and can never be contextually neutral. To ensure human enjoyment, it would be a good idea to analyze the entire setting, including activities, tasks scenarios of usage. Designers must take on a greater responsibility. It is not just about the product; an ambitious design must also include the semantics of usage. Inspire the Users. Customer needs are changing: Functionality, attractiveness, ease of use, affordability, and safety are taken for granted. The new trends are for objects or artifacts that inspire users, enhance their lives, and evoke emotions and dreams (Demirbilek and Sener, 2003). This requires research into conscious as well as unconscious processes that are related to positive emotions and pleasurable experiences. The mechanics of hedonics. We have a poor understanding of what makes people happy (Loewenstein and Schkade, 1999). The effects of satiation of objects and ownership, and the relation to pleasure have been reasonably well researched. Some studies have found that subjects feelings did change substantially over time, but the changes could not be predicted at the outset. If we can learn to understand the mechanics of hedonomics, there will be signicant monetary rewards for product designers, and there shall be many happy customers and users. Cultural diversity. Research has shown that cultural diversity is of strategic interest for pleasurable design (Ono, 2003). Information on cultural diversity will consider identities of individual, social groups, and context of use, thereby contributing to better understanding of user needs. Affective product and Kansei engineering. Another emerging area of study is the manipulation of product shapes to elicit affective responses of consumers. Using a sorting technique and Kohonens self-organizing map, Chen et al. (2003) developed an affective design system to transform different customer affect into a specic product concept. These developments were inuenced by Nagamachis (1989) Kansei engineering technology.

6. Conclusion Affective evaluations provide a new and different perspective in human factors engineering. It is not how to evaluate usersit is how the user evaluates. The research on hedonic values and seductive interfaces is a welcome contrast to safety and productivity which have dominated human factors and ergonomics. Approaches to emotions and affect have been studied at many different levels, and several models have been proposed for a variety of domains and environments. This article represents the beginning of a promising and challenging research area. It opens a mineeld of conceptual and methodological issues for research and development. Much needs to be done to develop predictive models of affect and pleasure for design of products and interfaces. The current methodology for generating valid and reliable measures of affect is still immature. Acknowledgement I am grateful to Martin Helander for his comments on this article. References
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A different development is Citarasa Engineering (Khalid, 2005). Citarasaa Malay wordrefers to emotional intent and aspirations. In this case we assume that the customer understands how the product will fulll his or her emotional intentions. This is quite different from Kansei engineering, where the point of departure is to describe products using affective adjectives. In Citarasa Engineering (CE), the starting point is a description of the customers emotional needs. CE makes a great assumptionthat customers can indeed sense their emotions and understand how the product can fulll their needs. Future investigations of CE (e.g., CATER project) will conrm if this is a realistic approach.

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