A wants to design a sports car with a luxurious look, a masculine engine sound, and comfortable seats. However, he has difficulty translating abstract emotions into concrete realizations. To solve this problem, he uses emotional engineering to analyze consumer sensations and find ways to translate them into concrete design elements.
Imagine that one day, A is designing a sports car. He vaguely wants to have a sports car that looks luxurious, sounds masculine, and has comfortable seats. So how can A design a sports car that has a luxurious look, a manly engine sound, and comfortable seats? At first glance, it seems like an easy problem. But the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that it’s a very difficult problem.
First of all, the concepts of “luxury,” “masculinity,” and “comfort” are vague and abstract. These words are highly subjective and mean different things to different people. For example, luxury to one person might be a classic design, while to another it might be a cutting-edge design that incorporates the latest technology. As A ponders how to reflect these subjective sensations in a product, he comes to a conclusion. “How can I translate this abstract concept into a concrete design?”
Even if we assume that we have a clear understanding of these words, there is a bigger problem. How exactly to recreate that feeling? What makes a car look and feel luxurious? Is it the frequency or the volume of the tone that makes an engine sound masculine? Or, what is it about the seat that makes it comfortable? Is it the surface material or the density of the inner cushion? The questions are endless, and A is faced with increasingly complex problems.
There’s an engineering approach that can help her: emotional engineering. Emotional engineering is the study of analyzing human senses and emotions and translating them into concrete designs. It helps to translate the abstract needs of consumers into objective numbers that can be reflected in the design. For example, the abstract feelings of “luxurious exterior,” “masculine engine sound,” and “comfortable seats” that A wants can be realized by using emotional engineering.
There are five main steps in the emotional engineering analysis method. First, select the object you want to evaluate. Second, analyze the object and classify its features and attributes. Third, select adjectives that affect emotions, and fourth, survey consumers. Finally, the collected data is analyzed to identify specific design elements that can realize a particular emotion.
This analytical process can be used to solve the design problem of A’s sports car. For example, let’s say A wants to focus on a luxurious look. An emotional engineer might choose colors and shapes to analyze among the many elements that make up the car’s exterior. They can design different combinations, such as black with angular corners, white with rounded corners, and ask consumers “which combination feels most luxurious”. This data plays an important role in choosing the best design to embody luxury.
For example, a masculine engine sound can be analyzed for frequency and wavelength, and a comfortable seat can be evaluated based on seat material and cushion density. In this way, it’s possible to translate abstract sensory needs into concrete designs.
But it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are still limitations to quantifying human emotions. Sensory factors vary greatly from person to person, making it difficult to guarantee complete satisfaction. Nevertheless, it plays a very important role in helping to better understand and reflect consumer needs.
In today’s market, it’s not enough for a product to be functional to win the hearts and minds of consumers. To stay competitive, companies need to deliver products that appeal to consumers’ emotions. It’s about more than just performance, it’s about experience, and emotional engineering is one of the key ways to create that experience. This is why this emotional engineering approach is so important in designing the sports car that Mr. A wants.
