Integrating Product form Preference into Engineering Design

The product form plays an important role in a person's judgment of a product, in part because the product's appearance often provides the first impression. This work presents methods for the integration of the product form preference into the engineering design process. In the first experiment, linear models to predict the subject preference of the form of automotive wheel rims were built with physical dimensions, Gestalt principles, semantic space, and Kansei words as predictors. Subject ratings of preference and other perceptual dimensions yielded linear models that were appropriate for product form preference prediction, with the Gestalt model most suitable for design purposes. Inspired by this results, quantifications of each Gestalt principle were developed and validated by applying them to images already recognized in the Gestalt literature as having specific Gestalts. Then, in a second experiment the relationship between Gestalt principles and aesthetic was investigated via subject preference ratings of sets of wheel rim designs with low and high Gestalt. With the complexity of the designs held constant, the data showed a positive correlation between Gestalt and subject preference(aesthetics) and that designs with similar Gestalt level but different physical dimensions maintained similar preference.

Lastly, a complexity metric was developed to quantify the complexity of two-dimensional product representations. The metric was validated in the third experiment in which one pool of subjects reported their perceptions of the complexity of images of house facades. A second subject pool reported their preferences for the house facades. Analysis demonstrated that the aesthetic measurement equation of order divided by complexity, with order measured by Gestalt and complexity by the validated metric, is a valid representation of subject preference within designs of the same style.

The two quantifications developed in this work, both independently and joined by the aesthetic measurement equation, provide ways to quantify the product form preference that can be integrated into the engineering design of a product. This can enable groups of designers to develop products design for form and function.