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• Product Functionality & Experience (PFE)
• Product aesthetics and experience
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Product aesthetics and experience 

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Product experience Although the functionality a product offers has always been, and will remain, an essential precondition for product satisfaction and market success, various developments – technological innovations, ‘experience economy’, etc. - point at an increasing importance of product experience as a major driving force of product acquisition and use. Product experience is a multi-dimensional construct that can be operationalised by verbal and behavioural measures tapping appraisal, emotional and aesthetic reactions. In this subprogramme the focus is on the active user, interacting with a product through all his senses and within a particular context, and thereby undergoing a dynamic and multi-layered experience. Understanding the user To understand how a product is experienced, knowledge of tactual (touch), auditory (sound), and chemosensory (smell and taste) perception is indispensable, next to the predominant visual mode. This subprogramme examines relationships between perception through various senses and the experience of product properties. Of special interest is how perceptions and related experiences by these sense modalities add up, interact and shape expectations and thereby improve, or otherwise affect, product understanding and user experience.

PrEmo is a tool that was developed by Pieter Desmet to measure the emotions people experience with regard to a product   Children’s wheelchair designed to evoke a positive emotional response [design: Eva Dijkhuis]

Influencing factors

Product experiences depend on a product’s usability and context of use (i.e. cultural and social influences), as well as on its symbolic qualities (e.g. brand, typical users, memories) bearing to a user’s personal and social identity. Interactions between these factors and product attributes are of special interest

Designing experiences

Finally, actively dealing with products could lead to a broad range of human experiences, varying from feelings of attachment and enrichment to all types of emotions. Research is directed towards identifying, classifying, and designing relevant experiences and relating them to product and interaction properties.

Human-centred approach

The aim of this research orientation is to contribute to experience centred design. Leading international companies recognize product experience as a key issue in design, which has resulted in related foci appearing at universities. Supplementing their technological orientation, our focus is humancentred, i.e. understanding the processes underlying product experiences, and design driven, by focusing the end goals of research projects on theoretical models, tools, or methods that can be disclosed to the industrial design community.