Guiding Emotion:
Constructing New Approach for Design Studies

Abstract

Interest in the relationships between emotional concerns and design began with the work of some design scholars in the 2000s, mostly based on users’ perspectives. However, few of the studies explored the changes in junior design students’ emotions during their process of innovation or looked at how their changes in emotions could influence their creative process and even the outcomes.

Junior design students may have difficulties processing the received information from objects that involve many human interactions. This suggests that the process of their innovation is made up not only of rational and logical considerations; in addition, it includes the technique, experience and skills of the designers and even their responses towards the external environment or stimulants around them. Their responses to the external environment can be regarded as emotional responses. Hence, ‘intrinsic factors’ including emotion or affective systems, can affect junior design students’ considerations in the design process. From past studies and investigations, theories about relationships between emotions, the process of making decisions and the design process were developed. The close linkages between designers, design outcomes and the users/audiences in the ‘design and emotion’ aspect were also explained. Besides, the relationships among junior design students’ emotional changes, internal factors, and external factors of the design process were investigated. These theories provided sufficient theoretical background to consider how to help junior design students manage the emotional changes in their design processes for better performance in these processes. These theories would potentially be applied in design education. The needs to introduce these theories to junior design students’ design processes and influence their manipulation in their design processes were indicated. However, effective approaches to these aspects have not yet been developed.

Aims

This study aimed to investigate some approaches for guiding junior design students to control their emotions in the design process. Practical guidelines are possible tools to help them, and elements involved in these guidelines have to be identified. As a result, effective approaches for motivating junior design students to learn these guidelines should be explored. The difficulties of introducing design and emotion concepts into design learning have to be investigated. Also, the contributions that would be achieved after following the guidelines and applying concepts of emotion in design studies have to be proposed. To achieve these, an empirical study will be conducted to collect both quantitative and qualitative data for further analysis. Junior undergraduate participants in creative arts (design) studies will be invited to manipulate and apply the proposed principles in their design processes. This empirical study will be conducted via two research studies. Participants will be invited to take part in several design processes for investigating emotional elements; these would enhance junior design students’ abilities to manipulate their design processes. Participants’ performances will be monitored by an emotion-tracking mobile application. Their feedback on these proposed principles will be collected through individual interviews and an emotion recognition system. Also, the effectiveness of the proposed principles in the collaborative design process will be collected in a focus group. Lastly, the elements that potentially motivate junior design students to manipulate their design processes with managed emotional elements will be reflected by participants’ lablogs. This study will demonstrate how junior design students can introduce emotion in the design process.

Objectives

• To explore the approaches for the junior design students to introduce emotions into their design processes
• To investigate the emotional elements that would enhance junior design students’ abilities to manipulate their design process
• To propose some principles for guiding junior design students to adjust their emotional changes in the design process.
• To examine the effectiveness of principles for guiding junior design students to control their emotional changes in the design process.
• To investigate how to motivate junior design students to manipulate their design process with managed emotional elements.

Deliverables

Understanding Typical Emotions in the Design Process.
HO, A. G. (Forthcoming, Dec 2024). Convergences – Journal of Research and Arts Education, 17(34), ??-??. [Q4, SJR 2023, 0.1]

Developing strategies for junior designers to manage the design and emotions.
HO, A. G. (2024). New Design Idea, 8(1), 5-32. [Q1, SJR 2023, 0.19]
https://doi.org/10.62476/ndi.8105

Emotion Guideline Workbook: Managing the Design Process.
HO, A. G. (2024). Taylor & Francis. USA: CRC Press.
https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003464815

Connecting Emotion with Design Learning.
HO, A. G. (2023). In: Kye, H. W.; Kim, D. W.; Kim, S. M.; Kim, E. R.; Park, J. H.; Lee, J. Y. & Choi, J. M. (eds) Proceedings of the HCI Korea 2023 (한국 HCI학술대회 2023). (pp. 586-592). Gangwon-do 강원도, South Korea: The HCI Society of Korea.

Emotion from Creativity: Principles of Manipulating Emotional Management in Design Learning.
HO, A. G. (2022). In: Bruyns, G. Wei, H.  (Eds) [  ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes. IASDR 2021. (pp. 276-290).  Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_19

Understanding Junior Design Students’ Emotion During the Creative Process.
HO, A. G. (2021). In: Ayaz H., Asgher U., Paletta L. (eds) Advances in Human Factors in Training, Education, and Learning Sciences. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 269. (pp. 120-126). Springer, Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80285-1_15