The experimental assessment of sensory dominance in a product development context Online publication date: Mon, 08-Mar-2010
by Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein, Jacco J. Otten, Fien Thoolen, Paul Hekkert
J. of Design Research (JDR), Vol. 8, No. 2, 2010
Abstract: Although all senses are open to obtain information during user-product interactions, some sensory information can have a larger effect on the product experience than others. We investigated an experimental approach to quantify the relative importance of the sensory modalities in user-product interactions. For each modality, two stimuli were selected with comparable differences in pleasantness scores. All possible stimulus combinations were evaluated for two products: a portable air purifier and a table lamp. Both studies found a significant effect on pleasantness only for different product colours, suggesting that vision was the dominant modality for both products. Interestingly, next to vision, smell affected responses on the activity dimension of product experience, whereas touch and sound affected the potency dimension. Because we found hardly any relationship between the pleasantness of a complex product and the pleasantness of its component stimuli, we discuss a number of factors that may have interfered.
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