The papers in this volume are from the conference ‘Affective Communication in Design – Challenges for Researchers', held in June 2007 at Weetwood Hall hotel, Leeds, organised by the White Rose Network for Affective Communication in Consumer Product and Exhibition Design. The network's academic members are mainly from the Yorkshire universities: York, Leeds, Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam; hence White Rose. Practicing designers and curators are members too. Academic members are from the physical sciences, engineering, computer sciences, psychology, sociology, linguistics and the humanities, as well as art and design. Their common interest is their subjects' application to product design and exhibition design (hence that part of the network's title). A main question has been can more than their individual parts be created from the members' diverse interests? We think this volume demonstrates the answer is yes.
The network was set up in the Summer of 2004, with funding from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC's) Culture and Creativity programme. This aimed to encourage research at the interface between science and engineering and the arts and humanities, to help create a body of knowledge for the artistic and creative industries. These had been identified as important for current and future wealth creation. Some of the research areas that might be supported were:
Tools to support creative activity; | |||||
Extension of technology beyond familiar paradigms; | |||||
Incorporation [into sciences] of approaches from arts and design traditions; | |||||
New evaluation methodologies; | |||||
New opportunities for cognitive science in terms of creative activity; | |||||
Models of creativity; | |||||
The immersive cultural experience; | |||||
Preservation and social memory. | |||||
This volume contains papers addressing all of these, grouped under three headings: affect and innovation processes, products and the senses, place and experience. How to support creative activity within an organisation (as opposed to supporting individual artists) is certainly a major question today. The first paper of the affect and innovation processes section (Jordan) describes and analyses some success stories at a strategic level; the second (Hoonhout) reflects on some of the difficulties at a product development level. The third (Alberti et al.) reviews models of creativity and outlines ideas for supporting creativity with minimal restraint (where creativity starts can be very varied). The last paper (de Pennington et al.) is a bit different, certainly reflecting our interdisciplinary nature. It starts to explore, by neuro-imaging techniques, how our sensory and affective experiences are processed in our brains. It is an act of faith that greater knowledge in this area will eventually lead to a better understanding of creative drives.
The second and largest group, products and the senses, is concerned with our subjective impressions of products, and what influences them. Three sub-themes emerge. One is the complexity of thought processes that emerge if we are asked to choose between products based on which we prefer or prefer to use (Al-Azzawi et al., Karlsson, Jordan and Persson, Karlsson and Velasco), rather than on aesthetic and more psycho-physical grounds. The reasoning behind such choices can vary greatly between people. The influence of peers (i.e. people–people interactions, not just product–people ones) can be important too (Healey and Light). Another is how complex are our responses when more than one sense is involved, touch and sight (Karlsson and Velasco), sound, sight and touch (Spence and Zampini). The third is how to determine what are the subjective impressions of importance for a product's success (Barnes and Lillford), yet when that is formulated, how much detail may be extracted of value for improved affective product development (Spence and Zampini). This group of papers reflects the emerged importance of systematic studies of affect, beyond functionality and usability, for the design of today's consumer products.
The third group, place and experience, is directly connected to our exhibition interests. It contains papers from social sciences (Macdonald), engineering (McKay) and linguistics (Sharoff and Secara) on how those might contribute to exhibition design, and studies of people's responses to particular exhibitions (Ciolfi, Petrelli). These papers gain a coherence from a current activity of the network, within EPSRCs/AHRCs (Arts and Humanities Research Council) Designing for the 21st Century initiative, namely a research project within an exhibition to be at the Royal Armouries (Leeds) “Protecting the Body, Protecting the Book, Arms, Armour and Manuscripts from the time of the Hundred Years' War”. That different people's interests lead them to value and enjoy different elements of an exhibition is a perhaps not surprising general observation, but examples and scenarios provoke thought; and then the challenge is how to design one exhibition to suite as many interests as possible, and to understand how interests may be constructed. Here there is a clear overlap with the themes, if not the content, from products and the senses, and also how to be creative, from affect and innovation processes.
These three groups have been introduced here as separate entities. The extent to which briefs for new products can be developed from observing people's reactions to exhibition displays, how much improved displays can build on knowledge from products and the senses, and the whole can be integrated in supportive organisations, are broad questions from the conference.
The last part of the full title of this conference is Challenges for Researchers. Authors have been encouraged to submit open ended as well as speculative papers, with views of where research is still needed. We believe it will give readers a realistic view of what is the current state-of-the-art in affective communication research in design and hope that this will increase the interest of this volume for a wider audience.
With thanks to the support of Judith Pink and Sarah Clark (White Rose University Consortium Secretariat) and to the EPSRC, for its grant GR/T21264.