A semantic differential study of designers' and users' product form perception

This study investigated the differences in the product form perception of designers and users. The semantic differential (SD) method was employed to examine the relationship between the subjects' evaluation of telephone samples and form design elements. The authors used 14 image-word pairs for the evaluation of telephone design. The format for a measurement scale was constructed by a projection method in order to extract design attributes for an SD test. Twenty-four real telephone samples were presented to 40 subjects (20 designers and 20 users) for subjective evaluation. Multivariate analyses were performed to analyze the subject's perceptions and to build conceptual models for telephone design. The result revealed that many differences exist between designers' and users' perceptions of the same real objects and their interpretations of the same image-words. Users are not clear regarding the meaning of the image-words. Moreover, they are very concerned about whether a telephone looks new. Designers tend to value telephone samples with an elegant style while users prefer modern and sleek designs. The conceptual models of the two subject groups are made up of different components. Creative, mature, delicate design images play a greater role in affecting the designers' preference while the users' preference is affected mainly by images of delicacy. The implications of differences in preference and the relationship between image-word and actual design elements for the two subject groups are discussed. Relevance to industry It is the users' needs and preferences, not those of the designers, that should be taken into consideration during the product design process. Due to the fact that many differences exist between designers and users, it is a challenge for designers to transfer the consumer's needs into technical and design specifications. Quantitative data on the relationship between design elements and user evaluations is useful to product designers and managers in formulating design strategies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.