User's aesthetic response to direct, mediating and Interactive effects of content aesthetic and form aesthetics in product design

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Various researches on users' aesthetic response in product design have been undertaken and the results have been revised and published. Nevertheless, these results are similar because they tend to deal with the issue of users aesthetic response in a single entity, and because of these limitations, many questions remain unanswered. The authors of this study have reviewed past researches and have come to a realization that the elements affecting users aesthetic response are diversified even though they seem to be coherent.
Contrary to past researches, the elements affecting users response are broadly divided into two main categories. These categories are content and form. In other words, all the elements are divided into elements of content and elements of form.
In the study of content elements, typicality stands out as the most prominent and dominant element. And other elements such as novelty, timeliness and or style are only contributory elements to typicality. These elements can also be referred to as the secondary elements of content aesthetics.
For the study of form elements (also referred to as shape elements), unity, balance, rhythm, and proportion are the dominant and distinct elements in the category. They are referred to as the fixed elements of form aesthetics. This is because other elements such as harmony, simplicity and or complexity, are contributory elements to the primary elements, hence can be referred to as the secondary elements of form aesthetics.
However, this study concentrated only on the primary elements of each category.
In this study, the effect of each element is studied and a conclusion is derived on the characteristics of the elements and how it affects users' response.
Furthermore, the interrelationship of each element in a category was studied and the inter-correlation ship of elements in both categories was studied.
In other to answer some of the questions posed by each element, model questionnaires, and research processes were formulated. Product orientation evaluations were carried out and the evaluated products were later organized into categories.
In addition to the study of each individual element, a study was also carried out on the effect of mediating variables. The variables involved in this study were price level and brand hierarchy.
The interrelationship of mediating variables with elements of both categories was studied and results of the effects of the mediating variables in terms of price levels and brand hierarchy were obtained.
Also, the relationship of content element, user's preference, and mediating variables, on product category was studied. The product categories included function-oriented products, and design-oriented products.
Results obtained on the latter study showed that irrespective of price level, there was no distinct relationship between typicality and users preference in the function-oriented products. However, there is an inverted V shape relationship between typicality and users preference, and the price level affects sensitivity of the relationship between typicality and users preference in design-oriented product.
Conclusions on content elements study showed that typicality has a direct effect on users aesthetic response, it is moderated by conditional variables such as price level, and form elements affect typicality level, thus it can be concluded that form elements moderate content elements.
In the study of elements of form aesthetics, each elements effect on users preference was studied. The effect of moderating variables such as price level and or brand hierarchy was also studied.
For the study on unity, results obtained showed six distinct properties of the effect of unity on users aesthetic response. This include a linear relationship between unity and users affective response in high price products, a V shaped relationship between unity and users preference in low price products, a positive relationship between unity and user preference in high price products, a high preference for high price products endowed with high typicality, a high preference for low price products with both high- and-low unity, and unity response is moderated by typicality and conditional variables.
On the study of balance, results showed that higher and lower levels of balance in high and low price products increase user's affective response. And, because typicality is closely related to change of balance, it proves that content aesthetic element(typicality) and form aesthetic element(balance) are inter-correlated and they both have mutual effects on each other.
For the study on rhythm, form variation was studied for rhythm variation. Results obtained on the study of rhythm showed that rhythm expression is related to user's affective response. In other words, rhythm expression in both low and high price products increases user's affective response. Furthermore, typicality change is closely related to change of rhythm implying that content aesthetic element(typicality) and form aesthetic element(rhythm) are inter-correlated and they both have mutual effects on each other.
The study on proportion showed that proportion is multidimensional, six(6) proportion types exist, ideal proportion structure varies according to product categories, each product category has its unique proportion structure, and consideration of proportion as only an aesthetic factor is not sufficient. The study on proportion entailed the use models and variations in width and length of the models. Thus, results obtained showed that typical proportion increases users affective response, and typical proportion is related to both preferred proportion and ideal proportion.
The conclusions obtained for this study showed that, content aesthetic element(typicality) and form elements(unity, balance, rhythm, and proportion) directly affect user's affective response.
Both content aesthetic element(typicality) and form aesthetic elements are controlled and affected by conditional variables. Thus, rhythm, balance, unity and proportion are criterions for judging the level of typicality. That is, a change in any of the form aesthetic elements affects the level of typicality of a product.
Form aesthetic response is controlled by content aesthetic element (typicality), and even the same design can be evaluated positively or negatively according to mediating variables such as price level, e.t.c.
Also, for function-oriented and design oriented products, content aesthetics (typicality) is moderated by price and function while for low and high price products, form aesthetics (rhythm) is moderated by price.
Finally, specific product categories have different elements to be considered for the design of products in that category.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• I. Introduction = 2
• 1.2 Propose of the Study = 2
• 1.2 Research Objective = 5
• 1.3 Scope and Organization of the Study = 9
• II. Literature Review = 14
• 2.1 Philosophic Background in Aesthetic Literatures = 15
• 2.1.1 Subjectivism = 15
• 2.1.2 Objectivism = 19
• 2.1.3 Relativism = 22
• 2.1.4 Sociological Relationism = 28
• 2.1.5 Historicist Relationism = 30
• 2.2 Aesthetic Elements in Product Design = 32
• 2.2.1 Characteristic of the Aesthetic Experience = 33
• 2.2.2 Characteristics of Aesthetic Object = 33
• 2.2.3 Interrelationship between Aesthetic Subject and Object = 33
• 2.2.4 Characteristic of the Social Aesthetic Environment = 34
• 2.2.5 Characteristic of Historical Rotation in Subject and Object = 34
• III. Aesthetic Dimensions of Product Design Judgment = 37
• 3.1 Aesthetics and Product Design Judgment = 38
• 3.2 Aesthetic Judgment Process = 40
• 3.3 Object Aesthetic Dimensions = 43
• 3.3.1 Form = 44
• 3.3.2 Structure = 45
• 3.3.3 Texture = 45
• 3.3.4 Color = 46
• 3.4 Description on Object Attributes Consolidation in Abstract Aesthetic Dimensions = 48
• 3.4.1 Simplicity/Complexity = 49
• 3.4.2 Timeliness and Style = 51
• 3.4.3 Novelty = 51
• 3.4.4 Unity = 52
• 3.4.5 Proportion = 53
• 3.4.6 Balance = 54
• 3.4.7 Typicality = 54
• 3.4.8 Dynamics(Rhythm) = 56
• 3.4.9 Harmony = 56
• 3.4.10 Gestalt = 57
• 3.4.11 Selection of form elements for the study = 58
• 3.5 Shape Aesthetics and Content Aesthetics of Product Design = 59
• IV. Review on user Response to Product Design = 66
• 4.1 Aesthetic Response = 66
• 4.1.1 Cognitive Response = 66
• 4.1.2 Affective Responses = 69
• 4.1.3. Behavioral Responses = 70
• 4.2 Taste and Preference as Dependent Variables of User Response = 72
• 4.2.1 Innate Design Taste and Preference = 72
• 4.2.2. Cultural, Social Disposition of Taste and Preference = 74
• 4.2.3. user Characters Affecting Taste and Preference = 76
• 4.3 Conditional Dependent Variables for User Response = 79
• 4.3.1 Sequence Effects = 79
• 4.3.2 Social Setting = 80
• 4.3.3 Marketing Program Moderators = 80
• 4.4 Model of the study = 82
• V. Test of form elements = 86
• 5.1 Typicality = 88
• 5.1.1 Review on typicality = 89
• 5.1.2. Experimental study = 100
• 5.1.3 Conclusion = 108
• 5.2. Unity = 111
• 5.2.1. Review on Unity = 112
• 5.2.2. Atomistic versus relational properties of product designs = 114
• 5.2.3 Expectations on the Relationship between Unity and Preference = 116
• 5.2.4. Experimental Study = 117
• 5.2.5. Conclusion = 128
• 5.3 Balance = 129
• 5.3.1 Balance as aesthetic design element = 131
• 5.3.2 Customers response according to Involvement = 133
• 5.3.3 Cognition and emotion in psychological response = 138
• 5.3.4 Stimulus set = 140
• 5.3.5 Survey and analysis = 144
• 5.3.6 Analysis results = 144
• 5.3.7 Conclusion = 146
• 5.4 Rhythm = 147
• 5.4.1 Rhythm as an aesthetic element of product design = 147
• 5.4.2 Characteristics of rhythm = 149
• 5.4.3 Relationship between rhythm and preference. = 153
• 5.4.4 Effects of rhythm according to price level and brand hierarchy = 156
• 5.5 Proportion = 166
• 5.5.1 Characteristics and typology of proportion = 169
• 5.5.2. Relationship between proportion and aesthetics(mobile phone) = 179
• 5.5.3. Relationship between proportion and aesthetics(TV) = 186
• 5.5.4 Conclusion = 194
• VI. Conclusions and Future Research Directions = 196
• 6.1 Results and Conclusions = 196
• 6.2 Conclusions and Implication. = 205
• 6.2.1 Content element and aesthetics = 205
• 6.2.2 Shape element and aesthetics = 205
• 6.2.3 Mutual effect between content aesthetics and shape aesthetics = 206
• 6.2.4 Moderating effects of conditional variables on content aesthetics and shape aesthetics = 207
• 6.2.5 Implications = 208
• 6.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions = 209
• References = 212