You can imagine that when the Sony Walkman came out 30 years ago, it had an enormous impact. It all started when Sony’s boss at the time was fed up with dragging along a huge tape player with him on business trips. In 1954, the regency transistor already revolutionized listening to the radio on the go. The walkman made it possible to actually personally decide what you wanted to listen to while walking around or travelling. This was a major difference. I think that the launch of MP3 players didn’t have the same impact by far, so in that sense the Sony Walkman will definitely remain legendary.

A very nice ‘emotion related’ quote from the 13-year old boy who changed his iPod for a Walkman for a week:

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

Please share with me your own sobby back-in-the-days stories and compare them to the devices we use nowadays. In what way are they different? And, do they really provoke more meaningful experiences than, lets say, the legendary Sony Walkman??

After Paris and Barcelona, the rendez-vous is now set in the trendy heart of Florence. EUROSYN invites you to attend a FREE HIGHLIGHT of the “Hoo-Ha Sensorimix Festival”, laidback and rich in emotion.
Providing the opportunity to couple new sensory applications and never-seen-before demonstrations, followed by relaxing cocktail !

PS: The number of invited guests admitted to the Hoo-Ha Showcase is voluntarily limited to ensure a high level of comfort. It is therefore necessary for spectators to book as soon as possible to confirm their participation.

READ THE OFFICIAL FLYER

The LEM-emotions is a scientifically validated set of cartoon characters that represents eight specific emotions.

You can use the LEM-emotions to answer research questions (explore emotions) and allow people to explain how they feel (express yourself).

LEM-emotion products

Currently, only the LEM-stickers are available. SusaGroup will be extending the product portfolio with LEM-clickets (magnets) for on your fridge and whiteboards, and a LEM-game.

Added value

The LEM-emotions are fun, clear and easy to use! Therefore you can use them to:

Numerous applications

There are many, many ways you can think of to use the LEM-emotions. Make flipover evaluations in a brainstorm session more fun and effective, gather specific emotional feedback of magazines, use it in one-to-one interviews, enrich focus group sessions, etcetera.

Order them now and try the LEM-emotions stickers out:

PERSBERICHT (PRESS RELEASE IN DUTCH)
26 mei 2009

Boek Enriching bekroond met Duitse iF Award

Het boek ‘Enriching’, ontworpen door Fabrique Communicatie en Design naar aanleiding van een workshop geïnitieerd door de Design & Emotion Society, wint een prestigieuze iF Communication Design Award.

Het iF is een internationaal forum voor design gevestigd in Hannover. Al sinds 1954 reikt het instituut jaarlijks de iF Awards uit, een van de meest belangrijke designerkenningen ter wereld. Fabrique ontvangt naast de Award voor het boek Enriching nog twee Awards. Voor het TNT jaarverslag 2008 en de website Iamsterdam.com.

Het boek ‘Enriching’ is gemaakt naar aanleiding van de workshop “Verrijk de beleving van reizigers op vliegvelden door het ontwerpen van ingrepen met een bewust emotioneel effect” geïnitieerd door de Design & Emotion Society. De workshop werd georganiseerd in het kader van het Open Minds programma van het Ministerie van Economische Zaken, dat zich onder andere ten doel stelt om Nederlandse en Chinese ontwerpers bij elkaar te brengen. Studenten en professionals, waaronder een aantal Fabriquers, werkten tijdens sessies in HongKong en Delft vanuit een theoretisch kader aan de opdracht. Het boek ‘Enriching’ is het verslag van deze workshop en laat een aantal mooie cases zien van belevingsgestuurd ontwerpen vanuit een theoretisch kader.

Niet alleen de eindresultaten worden in dit boek zichtbaar gemaakt, maar ook het gestructureerde ontwerpproces en de toepassing van de emotietheorie. Schetsen zijn gewoon afgebeeld zoals ze tijdens de workshop aan de muur hingen. De gebruikte Post-its zijn rechtstreeks overgenomen, terwijl felle fluorescerende oranje stickertjes op verschillende punten in het boek de emoties aanstippen. ‘Enriching’ oogt als een echt schetsboek: ruw en onafgewerkt, maar zichtbaar met veel aandacht en liefde gemaakt. Het boek is ontworpen door Joana Mühlenbrock en Jeroen van Erp van Fabrique.

Met het winnen van deze prijs is Fabrique inmiddels in het bezit van maar liefst 120 nominaties en awards. Fabrique werd in 1992 opgericht. Met 85 medewerkers en vestigingen in Delft en Amsterdam is het een van de grootste bureaus voor communicatie en design in Nederland.

Noot voor de redactie
Voor vragen/opmerkingen kunt u contact opnemen met Eveline Schonewille, communicatie coördinator bij Fabrique Communicatie en Design: eveline@fabrique.nl of 015 219 56 44

Van het boek Enriching is voor geïnteresseerden een recensie exemplaar op te vragen bij ondergetekende

Zie ook:
http://www.fabrique.nl
http://www.ifdesign.de

THEMES

For each edition, we think carefully about the themes that we would like to see covered at the conference.
This time, we would very much like to ask our members (you) what is exciting, new, fresh, current and important in their (your) opinion. Which design & emotion related themes would you like to see and learn more about at D&E2010?

Share them with us on the discussion board of our LINKEDin Group:

Thanks a bunch and we all hope you fix the dates to meet us in Chicago!

As vice-president, consumer design, based at the company’s headquarters in Round Rock, Tex., he’s charged with getting the consumer to reimagine Dell.

“When I think about the PC industry it reminds me of the cellphone business 10 years ago,” he says, by which he means “giant Star Trek crappy phones.”

When he thinks about the old Dell he envisions the “Dell grey box. $399 after rebate.”

The new Dell is all about consumer focus, personalization and emotion, in which love trumps utility.

It’s a gamble, particularly amid a global downturn in information technology spending. Dell’s revenue declined by $13.4-billion (U.S.) in the fourth quarter of fiscal ‘09. Full-year revenue collapsed to $61.1-billion. And investors await the turnaround meant to be delivered by Michael Dell himself when he returned to run the firm two years ago.

In such an environment, it seems folly to launch the Adamo — “The world’s thinnest laptop” — at a base price of $2,499 (Canadian), even if it does have appealingly sculpted, scalloped key caps for comfortable typing.

Mr. Boyd, who came to Dell from Nike, bats back concerns about going luxury in a constrained economy. The Adamo, he says, is meant to cast a “brand halo” across the Dell lineup, “signalling to the market that this pinnacle of design is something that they are going to see top to bottom.”

That design aesthetic, he says, was born from consumer feedback.

“Everyone who had a desktop told us they hated it,” he says. Consumers would say, “Boy it would be great if you took that product and made it look as though it really belongs in the home.”

Accomplishing that meant thinking of the computer category the way electronics makers are increasingly thinking of televisions and such.

“We really wanted to blend technology and lifestyle in a more emotional way,” he says, holding out a bamboo sleeve that fits smoothly around the curvature of Dell’s Studio Hybrid desktop, dubbed both “sexy” and “über-cute” by Wired magazine.

Behind the scenes, Dell’s roster of five or so in-house designers has exploded to a near-130. What the company calls its “retail reach” has suddenly blossomed to more than 24,000 retail access points. And its connection to the artists community has resulted in its “Design Studio,” which invites purchasers to personalize their laptops with the works of a variety of funky artists, from South Africa’s Siobhan Gunning, to U.S. graffiti artists Mike Ming and Tristan Eaton, and Canada’s own cool king, Bruce Mau. (Canadian consumers will be offered limited online options at the end of April. The full Design Studio will be available to Canadian shoppers in August.)

“If you think about Dell historically, they haven’t been known for their innovation and design,” says Bill Kreher, technology analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis, Mo. “It’s been more about providing [products] for cost-conscious consumers.”

As Mr. Kreher sees it, the company shift was a necessary move. Dell has always had what Mr. Kreher describes as a “strong foothold” with the enterprise market — about 82 per cent of the product offerings are sold to business. “If Dell wants to move the needle they need to increase their traction with the consumer,” he says. (Mr. Kreher currently has a “Buy” recommendation on the stock.)

He notes that the 24,000 retail outlets has exploded from 13,000 a mere nine months ago, signalling that Dell is dead serious about making inroads here. “Consumers want to touch and feel the product and take it home at the time of purchase,” he says.

Dell’s own research bears this out: Mr. Boyd says that 40 per cent of consumers surveyed by the company said they would not buy a PC unless they could caress it.

But landing in the retail channel among the HPs and Lenovos makes it difficult to differentiate one offering from another. “It’s tougher and tougher to have your product shine relative to others,” says Mr. Kreher. “Michael [Dell] has talked about product lust and trying to create an Apple type of feel. I think it’s easier said than done.”

Making the Dell lineup shine is Mr. Boyd’s job. He slides over a Studio XPS 16 laptop, with anodized aluminum detailing and a leather “binding,” for lack of a better word, that gives the purchaser the feel of carrying a leather portfolio.

“If you set this against a MacBook Pro it would smoke it,” he says, making the point that its computing power is a given, not to mention the RGB LED display. It’s a rare reference to the technical offerings amid an hour-long conversation. “When I buy a car today probably the last thing I do is pop the hood and look at the engine,” he says.

Arrayed throughout the conference room are numerous high-design offerings, made one by one as they are ordered. I tell Mr. Boyd that I would like to design my own.

“You will be able to do that,” he says. “Some day.”

Nathan Shedroff’s latest book, Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable, has just been published by Rosenfeld Media, and is likely to become one of the most important books for designers on the subject of design, design practice, and sustainability.

Filled with insanely pragmatic advice, persuasive argument, and impassioned calls for action, Nathan’s book is essential reading for all designers, design students, business people, business students, innovation specialists, and advocates of all stripes.

In celebration of its launch (and in conjunction with our exclusive excerpt, Core77’s Editor-in-chief Allan Chochinov sat down with Nathan (well, email was more sustainable, being on opposite coasts) to chat about the book, the challenges ahead, the culture of business, and the amazing opportunities for designers right now.

Read interview

Hi Thierry, thanks for taking time for this.

Sure Marco! No problem at all.

The clunk of shutting doors, the crunchiness of cereals, the new car smell, the soft touch of a toothbrush,… Eurosyn is always seeking to improve the specifications of the “sensory properties” of products to meet real consumer expectations. Why are industrials so interested in sensory analysis?

The choice of a product is a more and more emotional and sensory experience. The consumers want pleasant products to look at, to hear, to touch, to smell and to taste. As the product is intended to please our senses, why not use sensory analysis to design and test it? This method allows a better understanding of the mechanisms of perception and to take into account the consumers’ feelings in product design. Initiated by the food industry for taste and smell, the approach has been applied to all other senses for the past fifteen years. For years, Eurosyn has concentrated on and developed numerous innovative sensory tools dedicated to new applications like: textile, eyeglasses, stationary, heating systems, telephony, sport equipment… Playing on sensations and feelings provides a means to explore new angles in a very common product world.

Which issues do you work on?

The overall liking of a product is very much conditioned by each and every detail. It is only natural that companies should take a close interest in them. Sensory analysis plays a key role in the understanding of perceptions. It helps manufacturers to design products fulfilling their customers’ sensory expectations. Companies’ requirements are becoming more and more accurate: How to measure the shock absorption of sneakers? How to obtain a clear reassuring sound on the closing of packaging? How to improve the glide of a pen or the touch of a mobile phone?

The research even looks into a dynamic approach for the car industry: people are driven round circuits and are asked to explain how the road feels, on speed, acceleration or road holing.

Certain cases involve working on the connections between senses: How do the smell and the softness of clean linen interact in the perception of a washing powder? How does the color of the walls impact the thermal comfort of an electric heater?

What are the foundations of sensory approach?

Customers do not always clearly express the reasons for their preferences. Their opinions are often not clear enough to build precise specifications. In addition, perception changes from one person to the next depending on their history and culture. Sensory analysis is used to translate and evaluate the consumers’ judgments. The method calls for trained panels, who can forget their own subjective values of assessment. They are specifically trained to qualify and quantify their impressions in an objective way. Yoghurts, skincare, shampoos, shavers or cars are felt, smelt, tasted and looked at by these professional panelists. The product features are dissected through their expertise. It is a tough job which requires a lot of practical experience. The Food industry has used these kinds of methods for many years, and their efficiency has no longer to be proved. The panelists are real sensory experts at the heart of the method. They first agree on specific and objective sensory vocabulary to describe the touch, the sound, the smell… of a product range: for instance, a lipstick will be defined by its consistency, glide or shine and not by its luxurious value which corresponds to a subjective interpretation. The experts draw up a real theory which allows a description of the products from a sensory point of view. Sustained training enables them to sharpen their perceptions and to perceive differences of intensity between products for every criterion. At the end, a final grading makes it possible to build out product sensory identity maps.

The method focuses on objective sensory measures, which do not take pleasure & emotions into account. How do you integrate these more subjective and essential dimensions?

Indeed, these two affective dimensions are included in our analysis. The products are also tested by targeted consumers in different countries. They give an overall liking score; information concerning the emotions experienced before and when using the product is also collected. Cross-cultural differences of perception can be revealed thanks to this complementary study. The “Sensetting” approach, developed by Eurosyn, makes it possible to link “objective” parameters (sensations measured by trained panels) and “subjective” data supplied by targeted consumers. As a result, the impact of sensorial characteristics on the emotions conjured up by a product can be specified.

Could you tell us more about a successful application of this approach?

Sure! A study was carried out on sporty scooters. The stake was to understand the notion of “the pleasure of driving” in order to provide sensory recommendations. Different scooters were tested on a private circuit. Several technical settings allowed a modification of the sensations felt when driving. A course had been specifically selected to place the drivers in different contexts of perception: acceleration, bends of varying sharpness, braking… Two studies were carried out simultaneously: an objective evaluation of the dynamic sensations with trained panelists and a hedonic test with targeted consumers. The latter assessed the level of comfort and seven relevant emotions selected thanks to preliminary testing. The results highlighted several groups of consumers with very different expectations in terms of pleasure of driving and emotions intended. This approach explained certain types of behavior in a very accurate way, linking sensory, hedonistic and emotional data. For instance, fear proves to be an essential criterion for a few consumers looking for strong emotions, and it maximizes pleasure. This emotion can also be related to sensory criteria assessed by the trained panel: adhesion, stability, bend inclination,… The study provided designers with directly exploitable information to optimize the scooter settings. All this gives us a deeper understanding of what “the pleasure of driving” feels like.
Certain other works which have been carried out in cosmetics and the food industry have also provided successful results.

Who uses these methods in companies?

Sensory analysis takes on its full meaning when working in collaboration with the different functions involved in the design process: Marketing, R&D, Design,… It allows the different company’s departments to share a common vocabulary and then proves to be a very useful tool to take decisions.

EUROSYN has also developed a new concept of multisensory seminars: the “Hoo-Ha Sensorimix Festival”. What is the philosophy of the event?

It is not EUROSYN’s first experience as far as multisensory seminars are concerned. For 7 years, at least 36 conferences have already been organized on this subject. More than 260 speakers have shared their experience and their know-how with a very wide public of industrials. The concept lay within the presentation of a large range of methods designed to specify the perceived quality of a product in a better way. Boosted by the success of the first edition in 2008, EUROSYN is exporting the venture to Spain with a seminar totally turned to multisensory and product experience! Barcelona will host this new session on May 29th 2009.

What does Hoo-Ha mean to you?

The HOO-HA Festival could be defined as “the mixture and the mess”. For one day, the festival is intended to be composed of amazing cocktails, mixing many different methods, sensations and innovative industrial applications. It is meant to awaken the senses! It also encourages meetings and exchanges between the enthusiasts for this field. It brings about long-term reflexion on new means of consumption and consumer expectations concerning perceived quality and comfort.

Just how original is this new sensory seminar compared to others?

The aim is to shake up the typical methods to adapt them to the new issues differing from the classic food or cosmetic field. The interest of many industrial sectors in this new research is constantly rising and the continuous search on the relevancy of the methods used is a decisive stake.

How would you describe your guest speakers?

They do not hesitate to free themselves from the chains of the methodological constraints to try out original ways to integrate sensory aspects in product design. Each one of them has developed an innovative and personal approach. In a certain way, the festival enables them to highlight these promising methods.

That is a nice compliment, for I will be one of the speakers myself And I look forward to share some of SusaGroup’s innovations.

Thanks for this conversation Thierry!

You’re welcome Marco. See you in Barcelona!

Extra information:

For a nice video capture of Eurosyn on French Television, please have a look: Eurosyn on French Television 1

If you like to register for the HOO-HA seminar in Barcelona, please visit Eurosyn’s website.

The Kansei method focuses on how consumers feel about a product idea very early on in the design process, before putting pen to paper, then translating the data into a physical design that satisfies these emotional needs. The concept originated in Japan and has been used by companies such as Mazda and Toyota.

Mortimer, speaking at a seminar called “Understanding Consumer Insight to Develop Superior Products and Packaging”, at this week’s Pro2Pac food and drink processing and packaging show in London, said the aim was to design emotion into products. In that way emotional language like ’stylish’, ‘premium’ or ‘quality’, is reflected in a physical package as, for example, consumers may view certain shapes as more stylish.

“It is important to delight our consumers when they purchase the packaging and we really know the benefit of connecting with our consumer. We can see increases in sales, increases in profits and we can really target our markets. It is not just the packaging, it is the product itself that we can mould and shape that can have a better impact on the consumer when they come into contact with the product.”

Mortimer said they were “developing a Nestle version of Kansei that we can execute when we feel we need it on specific brands”.

This means less out-sourcing of design and he said the company already has a network of over 20 designers, predominantly for packaging, placed in a specific R&D location, in a specific brand or market area they are working on.

By studying the consumer early on, the design process becomes less about guess work and is based on something real - which is data, according to Mortimer. It is also traceable, so you can see where the idea has come from. And the information can be used time and again for similar brands or certain emotional cues for consumers.

Black Magic
Mortimer said it was early days but the idea was gathering momentum and could be seen in Nestle products such as the recently re-designed Black Magic chocolate box, for which he said that shape, colour, font and texture were all led with key consumer emotions.

He added: “At Nestle we spend a lot of time and effort and money really understanding our consumers.

The Kansei methodology enables us to go into the mind of the consumer at an early stage and take an objective view of what might be right.

It gives everyone in the team a clear idea of what design success would be before we even start on the design process.”

Original source: Dexigner