Experimental study for computer aided affective product styling

In addition to a product's functionality, the emotional responses invoked by the product styling also play a role in deciding whether it appeals to the end users. This can be seen from many marketing campaigns attempting to bring out the affective values of products such as how they reflect a user's personality and enrich his/her lifestyle. A number of ergonomic studies have been carried out to explore these emotional aspects of product design. However, the results obtained often focused on individual features or only provided qualitative insights. In this paper, we utilize factorial experiment to systematically analyze how certain shape factors individually and interactively influence the user's impression of glasses frame. This approach not only allows us to identify various shape features and their combinations, but also to derive computational models for computer aided affective design. The experimental findings confirm some common perceptions of glasses frames. More information is revealed when considering the interactions between shape features.