Expressions: Embodiment in the experience of design

Products are not just objects by means of which we get things done. Apart from bringing aesthetic pleasures, for instance, they may also embody values we hold dear, communicate our fine taste to others, and help us define who we are. These widely varying functionalities are rooted in our capacity to perceive essentially lifeless forms as dynamic objects expressive of basic human experiences. This expressiveness forms the starting point for this thesis. Perceiving products as expressive in most cases comes most natural. One may readily perceive one object as distant, another as involved, and yet another as humble or proud, for instance, and at the same have an intuitive sense of what it is in a products appearance that contributes to a particular expression. However, the moment one questions why specific product features connote the expressive or figurative meanings they do, one often finds that accounting for a products expression is not always that easy or straightforward. In this thesis, we therefore seek to account for the relations between a products appearance and its expressiveness.