Tag: emotion-driven design

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Towards a holistic design for subjective well-being

Researcher: Roby Michelangelo Vota
Involvement: Research advisor (chair: Dr. Stella Boess)
Research conducted at ID-Studiolab (Delft, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Vota, R. M. (2015). Towards a holistic design for subjective well-being. Delft: Delft University of Technology.

In current approaches to Design for Sustainable Behavior (DfSB), the main focus is on “mitigating, controlling or blocking unsustainable or inappropriate behavior by users”. The concept of sustainability appears limited to restraining the environmental impact of behaviors, often at the detriment of people’s subjective well-being. However, personal and environmental well-being are not only compatible but even mutually supportive aspects of sustainability. Hence, a research was conducted to explore how design can address environmental sustainability and subjective well-being as complementary aspects of sustainability. Through observations of sustainability-related design activities, a series of key factors influencing the design approach emerged. Focusing on the factor ’empathy towards people’s positive experiences’, a design method and a set of design tools and techniques was developed to validate the effects of an experience-driven approach on the positivity of Design for Sustainability. The proposed method was built around three key points: (1) positive experiences as the focus of preliminary design explorations, (2) empathic understanding of the components and mechanisms underlying the experiences, and (3) exploration of short- and long-term effects of experiences on both personal and environmental well-being.

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The mood street, creating design interventions that support flight attendants

Research conducted in collaboration with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Desmet, P. M. A. , Fokkinga, S.F., Ozkaramanli, D., & Yoon, J. (2016). Emotion-driven product design. In: H. L.  Meiselman (Ed.). Emotion measurement (pp. 406-426). New York: Elsevier. Download
  • Yoon, J., Pohlmeyer, A. E., & Desmet, P. M. A. (2014). The mood street: Designing for nuanced positive emotions (pp. 707–716). Presented at the NordiCHI, Helsinki, Finland: ACM. Download

The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines wanted to introduce products and services in the crew center that evoke positive emotions to improve the mood of flight attendants just before boarding the airplane. At the beginning of the project, 10 positive emotions were chosen to design for, which guided the design process: anticipation, confidence, energized, inspiration, joy, kindness, pride, relaxation, respect, and sympathy. For each emotion, several ideas were generated. Because the emotions differ in terms of causes and behavioral effects, with interviews, observations, and creative workshops, the designers explored when and why flight attendants experienced each of the 10 emotions, and how these emotions contributed to their professional activities. The gained insights were translated into a collection of 30 designed interventions, three for each emotion.

Two examples are “Good Night” and “The Curtain”, which were designed to evoke kindness and anticipation, respectively. Good Night is a smartphone application that enables team members to help each other to be on time when they have early flights. The application is aware of the schedule of a flight attendant and automatically sets the desired wake-up time for each team member. At wake-up time, the application gently reminds the team members to check who might still be asleep by showing each member’s state, and, if necessary, signaling to give them a friendly wake-up call. In this way, the flight attendants kindly look after each other and feel connected even before they meet. The Curtain intends to stimulate positive anticipation for the upcoming flight. As the flight attendants walk from the crew center towards the airport gate, the closed curtain slowly opens and lights around the curtain frame glow, one by one. When the lights are on, the curtain is completely open. This moment builds up a feeling of expectancy and signals that they are ready and prepared to go “on-stage.”

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Playing with paintings to enhance museum experiences in Mauritshuis

Researcher: HungChu Shih
Involvement: Research advisor (chair: Dr. Arnold P. O. S. Vermeeren)
Research conducted in collaboration with Mauritshuis Museum and Kiss the Frog (Delft, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Shih, H., van der Lan., Calvi, L., Yoon, J., Keller, I. (2018) Designing trajectories of experience: In museums, around museums, or including museums. In: Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Calvi, L., & Sabiescu, A. (Ed.). Museum experience design: Crowds, ecosystems and novel technologies (pp. 301-323). Springer international publishing. Download
  • Shih, H., Yoon, J., & Vermeeren, A. P. O. S. (2016). Positive emotions for inciting behavior: Playing with paintings to enhance museum experiences (pp. 222–230). Presented at the 10th International Conference on Design and Emotion – Celebration and Contemplation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Download
  • Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Shih, H., & Yoon, J. (2016). Design for experiences beyond the museum: Classical paintings as an introduction to modern culture. Presented at the CHI ’16 workshop. Download

One of the current trends in the function of museums is the change from a single museum to connected museums or museums as part of large institutional ecosystems. In terms of designing for experiences, this trend implies that one no longer only designs for visitors’ experiences before, during and after museum visits, but that one should think in a more holistic way. This project explored possible implications of the above trend, based on a case of designing a mobile application (an app) for the Mauritshuis, a museum for classical art in the Hague, the Netherlands. The design of the app aimed at providing its visitors with a more engaging way of appreciating the classical Dutch paintings, at the same time, raising interest for and connecting visitors to modern Dutch culture.  The app contains the function of giving travel tips to the young adult travelers for exploring the Hague by means of a game ‘treasure hunting’. The treasures to be found are elements in famous as well as less famous paintings that connect to stories that are interesting for the young adult travelers.

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Positive emotional granularity cards

Research conducted at Delft Institute of Positive Design
Publication:

  • Yoon, J., Desmet, P. M. A., & Pohlmeyer, A. E. (2016). Developing usage guidelines for a card-based design tool: A case of the positive emotional granularity cards. Archives of Design Research, 29(4), 5–14. Download
  • Yoon, J., Pohlmeyer, A. E., & Desmet, P. M. A. (2015). Positive emotional granularity cards. Delft, Delft University of Technology. ISBN: 978-94-6186-440-6. Download
  • Yoon, J., Desmet, P. M. A., & Pohlmeyer, A. E. (2013). Embodied typology of positive emotions: The development of a tool to facilitate emotional granularity in design (pp. 1195–1206). Presented at the 5th International Congress of International Association of Sciences of Design Research (IASDR), Tokyo, Japan. Download

Positive emotional granularity cards are meant to support an emotion-focused design process by helping designers to get a nuanced understanding of positive emotions. The card-set consists of 25 cards, each of which represents a distinct positive emotion. The card-set incorporates definitions of emotion labels, eliciting conditions, and visuals of expressive behavioral manifestations. The visuals of expressive manifestations were developed and validated to clearly characterize the specific emotions. The card-set can be used in both design research and design practice as a tool for communication and as a source of inspiration. For instance, designers are enabled to communicate their design intentions in terms of emotional impact, and end-users are enabled to report the distinctiveness of emotional experiences. Furthermore, divergent thinking in design conceptualization can be facilitated by exploring the relationship between varied eliciting conditions of positive emotions and product features.

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Design for interest: Exploratory study on a distinct positive emotion in human-product interaction

Research conducted at ID-StudioLab
Publication:

  • Yoon, J., Desmet, P. M. A., & van der Helm, A. (2012). Design for interest: Exploratory study on a distinct positive emotion in human-product interaction. International Journal of Design, 6(2), 67-80.
  • Yoon, J. (2010). Interest in human-product interactions. Delft: Delft University of Technology

Can we design interactions that evoke a distinct positive emotion? This project explored the possibilities to design interactions that elicit user interest. On the basis of appraisal theory, it was predicted that interest is evoked by a combined appraisal of novelty-complexity (a product must be appraised as novel and/or complex) and coping potential (one appraises oneself to have sufficient skills and resources to deal with an event). Three music players were developed to test this hypothesis. These were identical in terms of appearance, but different in terms of interaction qualities. The music player consists of a wooden container, a bar, a speaker, LEDs, and two electromagnets. The electronic components are housed inside the wooden container. The bar is for switching on/off, changing songs and controlling volume range. The setting of electromagnets and LEDs was programmed for manipulation of interaction qualities and behaviors of the music players. This project was featured in Dutch Ergonomics Society News.

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Information system for the waiting room of the emergency department

Research conducted at Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology
Publication:

  • Yoon, J., & Sonneveld, M. (2010). Anxiety of patients in the waiting room of the emergency department (pp. 279–286). Presented at the 4th international conference on tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI), Cambridge, MA, USA: ACM.

Several studies have shown that although people in the waiting room of emergency department often feel numb, being afraid, or having no control, and hospital staffs often fail to notice these patients’ problems and to offer appropriate and timely patient care. This project aimed to understand the patients’ experiences in the waiting room and to develop a design intervention that enhances the waiting experience. I explored the context and interactions in the waiting room with a focus on the factors that cause anxiety of patients by observing them and their family members, and interviewing the head of the department. The main findings were distrust between patients and staffs of the hospital, the patients’ consistent focus on their status, and an uncertainty about the waiting time. To moderate these anxieties, an interactive information service that enables patients to gain sufficient information about the procedure and the waiting time was proposed. The solution creates an informative environment through an ambient visualization that embodies the patient profile and the order of waiting people in real-time on the basis of the result of patients’ triage tests and the operation policy of the department.