Meaning of Industrial Design Objects: From Designers to Users

Structural features of everyday objects of industrial design and expressive qualities possibly communicated by the same objects are investigated. The objective may be defined in terms of the following points: (1) communication between designers and users; (2) differences in appraisal between groups of experts and nonexperts; (3) systematic relationships between structural characteristics and expressive qualities of the objects considered. Three groups of subjects were interviewed: four designers responsible for the design of six objects, twenty advanced-level design students (experts), and twenty nonexpert students. All subjects had to fill in a questionnaire based on an open interview with the designers. The questionnaire was divided into two parts: structural characteristics and expressive characteristics. A multifactorial analysis and t-test were performed on the data. The results suggest that (1) communication between designers and users exists in a large number of item appraisals and is not the result of the ambiguity of the physical properties of the objects; (2) specific training in design has a direct influence upon object appraisal, indicating a certain differentiation between the groups of experts and nonexperts; (3) there are no systematic correlations between structural and expressive characteristics except in one very specific case: between the structural characteristic of shape and consistency of material, on the one hand, and the expressive qualities of dynamism, on the other.