The bodily basis of product experience

Abstract

Based on the work of Lakoff and Johnson, this paper argues that part of our product experience is rooted in bodily interactions between people and their environments. Lakoff and Johnson convincingly demonstrated that repeated bodily interactions of a similar kind lead to the formation of image schemas guiding our understanding of verbal expressions. Here, it is proposed that the same underlying principles also govern our understanding of the expression of products. If correct, product expressions theoretically structured by the same underlying schema must be highly related. An experimental study involving chairs partly confirmed this prediction. The paper closes with a tentative discussion on how a chair's perceived expression could be related to the embodiment of schemas in its spatial and material features. Products of industrial design, like those of architecture, are not only supposed to function in a strict utilitarian sense. Among industrial designers and architects it is well acknowledged that products also influence the way we experience our material environment. Although these experiences change constantly under the influence of context factors, such as trends, technological developments, etc., a designer is able to influence these experiences in a desired direction by manipulating a product's expression. Despite the extensive knowledge available for establishing the behavior of materials, technology, etc., determining the way a product's expression will be understood is less straightforward. In establishing a product's expression, designers often have to rely on subjective knowledge, personal views, and (cultural) values. Classic theories on perception and cognition offer knowledge of a kind too general to be applied in unique design situations. However, in recent studies in cognitive semantics an experientialist theory on perception and understanding is put forward that provides clues to how we understand human expressions (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 and Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). According to this theory, experiences, arising in bodily interactions with the world, motivate our understanding of expressions of all kinds. The experientialist theory may be of interest for designers who intend to create a particular product expression. Before looking into this theory more closely, a brief historical overlook will be presented first, indicating that the role of the body in experiencing our world has been acknowledged ever since the end of the 19 th century.

Tough package, strong taste: The influence of packaging design on taste impressions and product evaluations

“…With respect to impressions of intensity or potency perceptions, various shape features (e.g., size, relative height, shape angularity) have been shown to affect consumer evaluations (e.g., Arnheim, 1974;Van Rompay, Hekkert, & Muller, 2005;Van Rompay, Hekkert, Saakes, & Russo, 2005;Zhang, Feick, & Price, 2006). The relationship between shape angularity and potency perceptions has been particularly well documented.…”

Handle with care! Why and how designers make use of product metaphors

“…Along these lines, Van Rompay, Hekkert, and M€ uller (2005) showed that our embodied image schemas could explain our interpretation of objects' abstract characteristics, such as trustworthiness, dominance, restlessness, and so forth. For instance, they found that jugs that express higher degrees of closure of their contents were perceived as more 'secure' and 'constricting'.…”

Embodiment and Embodied Design

“…The phrase "embodied design" was first coined by Thomas van Rompay, then a cognitive-psychologist-turned-industrial-designer, who used Conceptual Metaphor Theory to tune the emotional experience evoked by public structures, such as bus-stop shelters (Van Rompay, Hekkert, & Muller, 2005). Abrahamson (2009) imported the phrase into the learning sciences to describe the craft of engineering pedagogical artifacts and activities attuned to how humans naturally perceive the world, yet conducive to disciplinary reanalysis and signification.…”