Emotional Effects of Product Form in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures

ABSTRACT

This research investigates differences in visual form perception of products in individualist and collectivist societies to help designers and market analysts design products according to their users’ formal preferences. This study was conducted in two phases. First, five visual form types were selected out of 500 samples by design expertise for the test: geometric, organic, complex, simple, and symbolic forms. Second, three groups of American (highly individualist), German (individualist), and Iranian (collectivist) were selected based on their cultural dimensions. We developed Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with the emotions to focus solely on limiting emotions. Since the emotions were in two opposite spectrums, four emotions were considered as positive and the next four emotions as negative. ANOVA was conducted for normally distributed data and Kruskal–Wallis test for non-normal data. The results of this research showed that people with different cultural dimensions have different reactions, feelings, and preferences to products with different formal features. While individualists embrace geometric, simple, and symbolic forms, collectivists prefer organic forms most. The complex form is rejected by all three groups. This research extends our knowledge about cultural differences and provides a very critical tool for designers to design their products according to their users’ emotions.

KEYWORDS:

• Product form
• product appearance
• individualist cultures
• collectivist cultures
• emotional design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Parisa Jourabchi Amirkhizi

Parisa Jourabchi Amirkhizi is currently an instructor at Tabriz Islamic Art University, Design Faculty. She earned her Bachelor of Arts at this university in 2013 and her Master of Arts in 2020 from Tabriz Islamic Art University, working with Prof. Shahab Pourtalebi. In this thesis work, she developed a tool for personality evaluation in products using Iranian archetypes. After completing her master’s, because of her high ability in 3D modeling tools, Jourabchi started teaching CAD as an instructor, and it is now a year she is performing his job at this university. During this period, she is working on researches in the fields of Ergonomics, Cognitive Design, and Product personality.

Shahab Pourtalebi

Shahab Pourtalebi is a full-time senior UX Designer and a part-time professor at Sheridan College, Humber College, and BCIT. In his Ph.D. research at TU Delft, he studied designing interactive intelligent systems. He has created a framework for a design-oriented tool based on system-level feature-based modelling and simulation of cyber-physical systems.

Naeimeh Anzabi

Naeimeh Anzabi is now a PhD student at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan. Her research is in human robot interaction field and investigates how active listening behaviour of robots can enhance trust. She got her Bachelor and Master degree of industrial design at Tabriz Islamic Art University and worked as lecturer for almost 5 years before continuing for doctorate degree.