The Psychology of Design

Creating Consumer Appeal

Rajeev Batra, Colleen Seifert, Diann Brei, Rajeev Batra, Colleen Seifert, Diann Brei

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317502098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Publicidad

Design plays an increasingly larger role today in creating consumer desire for products and liking for commercial messages. However, the psychological processes involved are only partially understood. In addition, design is inherently interdisciplinary, involving (among others) important elements of aesthetics, anthropology, brand strategy, creativity, design science, engineering, graphic design, industrial design, marketing, material science, product design, and several areas within psychology. While researchers and practitioners in all of these fields seek to learn more about how and why "good" design works its magic, they may benefit from each other's work. The chapters in this edited book bring together organizing frameworks and reviews of the relevant literatures from many of these contributing disciplines, along with recent empirical work. They cover relevant areas such as embodied cognition, processing fluency, experiential marketing, sensory marketing, visual aesthetics, and other research streams related to the impact of design on consumers. Importantly, the primary focus of these chapters is not on product design that creates functional value for the targeted consumer, but rather on how design can create the kind of emotional, experiential, hedonic, and sensory appeal that results in attracting consumers. Each chapter concludes with Implications for a theory of design as well as for designers.

Part I Embodied Design

1 Implications of Haptic Experience for Product and Environmental Design

Joshua Ackerman

University of Michigan

DOI: 10.4324/9781315714806-1

It seems relatively uncontroversial to declare that what a decorative vase looks like or how a speaker system sounds are important elements of product design. Yet, do we consider the physical feel of these items to be equally as critical to their design? Does the heaviness of the vase matter for how we perceive its functionality? Could the firmness of the box that the speakers are packaged in affect our judgment of this system? The aim of this chapter is to make the case for the experience of touch as a central factor in our impressions and decisions regarding people, situations, and products, and thus its general importance for design. The study of haptics—referring to the sensation and movement associated with tactile experience—is flourishing, nowhere more so than in the social and decision sciences (Peck, 2010). This is because research has increasingly shown that how things feel, and whether we have the chance to feel them in the first place, has wide ranging psychological implications well beyond the straightforward idea that something can feel good or bad.

Touch is one of the five classic senses we learn about in primary school (humans actually experience other sensations, such as balance and pain, as well). Touch is also the first of these senses to develop, emerging relatively early in embryonic development, and it utilizes the widest bodily distribution of receptors of any sense—our entire skin can detect elements of tactile experience (Gallace & Spence, 2010; Gottlieb, 1971; Montagu, 1971). Whereas many senses function primarily for information acquisition, haptic abilities are uniquely involved in two functions: (1) gathering of information and (2) direct manipulation of stimuli and environments. Recent research indicates that tactile sensation further affects two mental analogues of these physical functions, impression formation (analogue of information acquisition) and decision making (analogue of environmental manipulation), making it quite important in an array of individual and interpersonal domains of judgment. One such domain of particular relevance for the topic of design is consumption, or consumer, behavior.

People use haptics to interact with a wide array of items and products on a daily basis, both in the physical world and increasingly in digital formats. Data on consumer evaluation of products indicates that people not only prefer the opportunity to touch products, but they also will put effort into seeking out such opportunities (Accenture, 2014). Two interesting examples of this effort that have emerged widely in the internet age are showrooming and webrooming. In showrooming, people visit brick-and-mortar stores to physically interact with and evaluate products but then go online to actually purchase these products. In webrooming, people evaluate products online (presumably where more information exists) but then visit retail locations to actually purchase these products. Both of these behaviors are common (showrooming: 73% of consumers; webrooming: 88% of consumers; Accenture, 2013) and both involve the choice to shop in-person at stores where the ability to touch products exists.

Data like these indicate that touch matters to people. But exactly how does it matter? What kinds of influences does haptic experience have on consumption outcomes? What are the implications for design of consumer products and environments? This chapter is organized into three key sections that address these questions. First, I will outline the basic elements of haptic experience, including differences in the ability, motivation, and type of touch. Next, I will review literature on the various influences of haptic experience, considering both direct and indirect influences and focusing on a hot topic in psychological and consumer research—embodied cognition. This section will cover the diverse routes by which tactile sensation and motion shape impressions and decisions and also identify areas of emerging research. Finally, I will suggest several domains where designers could beneficially attend to the implications of haptic experience. This chapter cannot hope to review every piece of research in the broad fields of haptics and sensation, but it should provide a starting point for understanding the many and often indirect ways that touch matters, both for design and for our everyday lives.

Elements of Haptic Experience

There are many ways to conceptually carve up experiences of tactile sensation and bodily movement. The framework I will present highlights three aspects of haptic experience that vary between people and situations: the ability to touch, the desire to touch, and the type of touch.

Ability to Touch

Tactile interaction with items requires both the situational opportunity for contact and the physical capability to engage in that contact. Though it might seem rather obvious that people must be able to mentally and physically process tactile sensations and movements in order for these to play a strong role in impressions and decisions, little consumer research has confronted the fact that not everyone can feel to the same degree. A number of disorders, some quite prevalent, can impair aspects of sensation, balance, and movement (e.g., diabetes, Parkinson’s), and these impairments can manifest cognitively through deficits in processing action-related concepts and words (Boulenger et al., 2008). Such problems could certainly affect consumer behaviors as well.

Many situational elements also can prevent people from touching items. In consumer settings, products may be shown but not available for interaction due to factors such as company norms and rules, restrictive packaging, or storage of products in locations not readily accessible (e.g., display cases). Certain products, including experiential products and services, are not even touchable. Clearly, the situational possibility for physical product interaction is an important factor for leveraging the different influences of haptic experience. It is, however, not 100% necessary for these influences to emerge. Research suggests that mentally simulating the enactment or reenactment of touching a product can produce some effects very similar to actually touching that product (Kamleitner, 2011; Peck, Barger, & Webb, 2013). This work suggests that, although the experience of touch involves a physical sensation, much of this sensation’s action on our behavioral responses is fundamentally psychological. I’ll review this research more in a later section of the chapter.

Desire to Touch

The desire to touch refers to people’s motivation to engage in haptic experience and their awareness of the extent to which this experience is occurring. Within the consumer literature, internal motivation has largely been captured by one individual difference measure—need for touch. The need for touch (NFT) is conceptualized as a “preference for the extraction and utilization of information obtained through the haptic system” (Peck & Childers 2003a, p. 431). This construct is fundamentally motivational in nature and is multidimensional in structure. NFT has two dimensions, instrumental and autotelic, which differ in multiple ways. From a motivational standpoint “self-attributed motives corresponding to the instrumental dimension of NFT are characterized by organized analytic thought that is initiated by an explicit goal that drives behavior. In contrast, more implicit motives represented by autotelic touch reflect compulsive and affective themes intrinsic to an activity that are not elicited by reference to unmet goals” (p. 431). Thus, the instrumental dimension is concerned with how people solve problems using touch, from gathering information to manipulating products. The autotelic dimension is instead concerned with how people have fun and seek sensory stimulation for its own sake through touch. Highly instrumental people prefer haptic elements that provide key information about items whereas highly autotelic people prefer products with pleasurable “touchability” (Klatzky & Peck, 2012; Peck & Childers, 2003a). Peck and Childers (2003a) also make a comparison between the NFT distinctions and explicit vs. implicit goals (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989), with the instrumental dimension presumably being more explicit and conscious than the autotelic dimension.

Research on need for touch has variously considered NFT as a single or a multidimensional construct, but empirical findings from its use appear consistent. People high in NFT interpret their product judgments to be more confident when they are able to haptically interact with products, and less confident when some barrier prevents them from doing so (Peck & Childers, 2003a, 2003b). Messages that encourage consumers to touch products elevate positive affect and are more persuasive to high autotelic people and can persuade high instrumental people as well when the touch experience is logically related to the message (Peck & Wiggins 2006). Low autotelics are particularly persuaded by touch when they are not strongly involved with the persuasive message (Peck & Johnson, 2011). Further, people high in autotelic NFT also appear to better correct for the influence of haptic cues compared to people low in autotelic NFT (Krishna & Morrin, 2008).

Individual differences in motivation clearly matter to the likelihood that consumers will physically engage with products as well as the implications of that engagement, yet the degree to which these implications will affect aspects of cognition also relies on people’s motivation to attend to their internal bodily states. People vary in factors such as body awareness and self-focus (Miller, Murphy, & Buss, 1981), which relate to the degree to which people prefer to pay attention to and incorporate knowledge about sensations and changes in their bodily condition. High self and body consciousness can make people more susceptible to haptic cues and interactions (e.g., Häfner, 2013; Kronrod & Ackerman, 2014). Thus, the desire to touch items, and to understand the impact of tactile feedback on one’s body, represent important motivators of haptic experience.

Types of Touch

Despite the general significance of haptic input, all touch is not created equal. Types of tactile sensation can be divided into two broad categories. The presence vs. absence of touch has a number of psychological effects, making simple contact the first (and most basic) category of haptic experience. Apart from contact, touch can be broken down into individual forms of sensation and motion. For instance, one of the most influential papers in the field of haptics delineates multiple types of object-based haptic qualities (Lederman & Klatzky, 1987). These include three distinct sets: substance-related, structure-related, and functional properties. Within the substance-related set, objects can provide tactile sensations of texture, hardness, weight, and temperature. Within the structure-related set, objects can provide volume, global shape, and exact shape. Finally, within the set of functional properties, objects can provide part motion and specific motion. Each of these kinds of sensations (each representing a specific piece of information to be acquired) is paired with an “exploratory procedure” that refers to the motor movement necessary to perceive the sensory element (Lederman & Klatzky, 1987, Table 1). For example, evaluations of texture require lateral motions in order to determine how rough or smooth an object is. Judgments of weight require unsupported holding to freely evaluate heaviness or lightness. Thus, both sensory and motor subsystems are integral components of haptic experience. Further, although we can think of basic contact as having one variety of influence on cognition, each type of sensorimotor element has a (somewhat) unique influence as well. In the following section, I review the current literature highlighting what we know about these influences.

Influence of Haptic Experience

Haptic experiences have an influence on thoughts and actions at a number of levels. Direct and indirect influences refer to those effects that occur due to intended touch and incidental touch, respectively. Additionally, a large and growing body of literature points to embodied influences of touch, particularly those tactile sensations and body movements that mentally activate associated concepts and metaphors. I detail each of these types of influences in this section, focusing most strongly on the embodied cognition literature.

Direct Influences

Real and imagined contact creates a sense of connection between person and item. With...