Investigating the role of aesthetics for interaction design

Two important aspects when designing products is to focus on comfort and to define the aesthetic and emotional value of the product. The main purpose of this research is to answer the question of how attractiveness perceived through the sensory inputs affects the assessment of comfort as well as to explore associations between comfort and product descriptors.

The findings of this research are expected to assist designers in developing successful new products by focusing more on softer factors. A study of twenty three respondents assessing comfort in three phases found that comfort scores increase when the levels of attractiveness increase and vice versa.

The findings further indicate that there are strong, significant correlations between scores of comfort and product adjectives commonly used to describe product attributes such as size, weight and surface material. Hence, there is an emotional dimension of comfort which is initiated by the visual input during a human – product interaction and is affected by the attractiveness towards the product.

In their endeavor to develop successful and comfortable products designers should focus more on attractiveness.