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We have an unconscious understanding of the meaning of different physical objects through our extensive interactions with them. Designers can extend and adapt the existing symbolic meanings through the design of these objects, adding a layer of emotive expression by manipulating their forms. Tactile Allegory is an ongoing research project in the MIT Media Lab's Object-Based Media group that explores the physical design language encoded into objects and asks: how can objects be computationally designed to communicate specific information through their very forms? Initial research explores the underlying design ‘grammar’ of the form of objects, particularly how objects can communicate information to us through their form. Building on existing research into emotive shapes [1-3], forms are broken down into their constituent design elements including the global aspect ratio, shear angle, vertical and horizontal aspect ratios and smoothness. This initial framework then maps these varying properties of design elements onto the established circumplex model of emotion [4]. These 8 emotive design taxonomies can then be used when a form needs to convey a character associated to one of the underlying basic emotions. |
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Emotive Form Design Framework |
1. Collier, G. L. (1996). Affective synesthesia: Extracting emotion space from simple perceptual stimuli. Motivation and Emotion, 20(1), 1-32. |