The Psychology of Design Creating Consumer Appeal [Paperback]

Design plays an increasingly larger role today in creating consumer desire for products and liking for commercial messages. However, the psychological processes involved are only partially understood. In addition, design is inherently interdisciplinary, involving (among others) important elements of aesthetics, anthropology, brand strategy, creativity, design science, engineering, graphic design, industrial design, marketing, material science, product design, and several areas within psychology. While researchers and practitioners in all of these fields seek to learn more about how and why good design works its magic, they may benefit from each others work. The chapters in this edited book bring together organizing frameworks and reviews of the relevant literatures from many of these contributing disciplines, along with recent empirical work. They cover relevant areas such as embodied cognition, processing fluency, experiential marketing, sensory marketing, visual aesthetics, and other research streams related to the impact of design on consumers. Importantly, the primary focus of these chapters is not on product design that creates functional value for the targeted consumer, but rather on how design can create the kind of emotional, experiential, hedonic, and sensory appeal that results in attracting consumers. Each chapter concludes with Implications for a theory of design as well as for designers.

Part 1: Embodied Design1. Implications of Haptic Experience for Product and Environmental Design Joshua Ackerman 2. The building blocks of design: Conceptual scaffolding as an organizing framework for design Lawrence E. Williams 3. The Conceptual Effects of Verticality in Design Luca Cian 4. Sensory Imagery for Design Aradhna Krishna Part 2: Designing Product Features 5. Blue-washing the Green Halo: How Colors Color Ethical Judgments Aparna Sundar and Jamesl3l