The effects of sensory impairments on product experience and personal well-being

Abstract

To determine the roles that the sensory modalities play in user – product interactions, one modality was blocked during the execution of eight simple tasks. Participants reported how they experienced the products and how they felt during the experiment. Blocking vision resulted in the largest loss of functional information, increased task difficulty and task duration, and fostered dependency. On the other hand, the other senses were used more and product experiences increased in perceived intenseness. When touch was blocked, the perceived loss of information was smaller and participants reported that familiar products felt less like their own. Blocking audition resulted in communication problems and a feeling of being cut off. Blocking olfaction mainly decreased the intenseness of the experience. These outcomes suggest that vision mainly plays a functional role in everyday user – product interactions, whereas the main role for olfaction lies in the affective domain. Sensory impairments change the way people experience products. Blocking a single modality during everyday tasks gives insight into the impact of impairments. These insights can be used to develop products for multiple user groups (inclusive design) or products used under extreme environmental conditions.

Keywords:

• Perception
• Product experience
• Sensory deprivation
• Disability
• Multisensory

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by MAGW VIDI grant 452–02–028 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to H.N.J. Schifferstein. The authors thank Eliane Scharten and Sanne Valkenburg for assistance in conducting the experiment and analysing the results.