Dear Dr. Mahmoudi, If you intend to develop a novel methodology for emotional design in a systematic way, then I suggest you to consider that you need (i) a testable underpinning theory, (ii) a workflow of activities, (iii) a set of purposeful methods, (iv) supporting instrumentation, and (v) criteria of relevance/properness (shown in the figure below). However, I think emotional design is a rather broad concept. It may work in the (i) instrumentality (tasks the artifact helps accomplish), (ii) aesthetics (sensory reactions to the artifact), (iii) cognitive (compliance with personal preferences), and (iv) symbolic (associations the artifact elicits) dimensions. First of all, you need to specify a focus. There is no universal methodology to enable design for emotion over all of the above dimensions. On the other hand, there are already many specific methodologies (e.g. Kansei engineering, Experience-Driven Design, Cultural-Psychological Analysis, Dynamic Preference Maintenance, cultural probes, etc.) from which you may choose. They have been tested, while in the case of a new methodology you will be supposed to justify, validate and consolidate it. Kind regards, I.H.

Imre what an interesting response. Thanks for sharing.

Dear IMRE: COULD you Please CITE a reference on cultural psych análisis por design purposes?  Regards.

Octavio, I think the firstly attached Proceedings, in particular the paper starting on page 487, may be useful for you. The secondly attached paper reports on some related discussions. Please let me know if I can assist you with anything else, Kind regards, Imre

Imre,

Thanks, the Leading Innovation through Design conference is really interesting in many ways. Especially, when it comes to ides of briding academia and business as well as different innovation strategies! Little out of this topic, but wanted to point that out anyway.

I don't think there is a methodology to the design emotions for products design as emotions design usually is different with very individual. ....the same emotion in printed in the design can manifest in a different configuration between individual of different culture race ....religion  .....the thing is that product design takes every aspect of design methods from its designer ...the designer can then take aspects of its design into further concept from every practicality from which the designer can withdraw from his/her thought of conception....  product design is everything and design everything. ..it is insubstantial without face it must be created by the designer.... technology is the fulcrum of tenacity as product design is a conception to the designer they must come up with the emotion to imprint into design concept. ...

Dr Booc, There are two things here: (i) the opportunity of developing a conceptually framing or procedurally guiding (systematic and scrutinized to a large extent) methodology for emotion-oriented design, and (ii) the contents of the methodology in terms of its underpinning theory, procedures, methods, instruments, and criteria -  based on which the unique (or even peculiar) features of emotions and design for emotions can be captured and operationalized. I think if we know enough about the phenomena of emotions, manifestations of emotions in contexts, and the principles of designing for emotions, then we can probably move ahead with methodology development. I dare to argue that otherwise the literature would not reflect so many efforts and results that point in this direction.

I should also say that I can hardly imagine that one mega-methodology or meta-methodology would be possible or useful. But that might be a problem with my imagination ... I believe that more relevance, adaptability, effectiveness, etc. can be expected from specialized methodologies than from these. The other issues, what you referred to very correctly and properly, are the weak causalities, vagueness of individual manifestations, implicitness and latency, culture/race/individual/etc. dependences, dynamic contexts, and anything else we can conceive as a factor of making the methodology development issue ‘a soft problem’ and a challenging undertaking. I think we just simply need to learn more about these. And if the currently available knowledge and technologies do not allow a successful handling of these factors, the next generation of them might be. Thanks a lot for your important comment! Regards, I.H.

@Preben:: Thank you for your comment. I fully agree with you. Kind regards, Imre

I'm not sure those of us who work in the field of design thinking these days consider ourselves to be trying to generate design methods, rather we are studying and trying to understand the amazing trick that designers pull off and the extraordinary range of ways they go about it.  I dont think we teach methodology these days but we do try to help student designers to find their own ways and see alternatives that might work for them.  We also increasingly manage to describe how outstanding designers go about their work.  Both Nigel and I have published on that theme seperately and together.

Imre, i really appreciate your last message and most of it are in line with my experience when teaching methodologies and using different methodologies in design projects related to emotional or affective design.  One area that involves emotional design are for example the area of "Value-sensitive Desig'  in which interesting objectives from both designers and target user groups can be elaborated

@Imre Thank you Professor for this fundamental and yet thought-provoking comment; infact Prof. Norman himself emphasizes that the emotional design is a psychological oriented approach that requires deep examination of how human reacts to an object emotionally and ,probably, subconsciously - deducing that there is no access to the specific part of user's mind in order to formulate that. But the controversy here is that in case of acquiring all the tools and data you mentioned, would it be possible then to create a theory or a method for emotional design, or, due to the psychological essence of it, there is no possible way to do that? Most of products and designs in the field of emotional design are now so popular which people tend to have them. Hence although the desideratum of searching for a method in emotional design may look so vague and baffling, the outcome of this quest, could result in an admissible recommendation, not a theory or method, which can help designers to get closer to the desirable solution. I want to know your point of view about this.

@Bryan 

Exactly Professor; maybe the notion of teaching methodology or generating one is outdated nowadays, but as you see every designer ,when designing and thinking, is using a specific method; thus there should be "something" that if we ,and all student designers, use it, we can facilitate the process of designing an emotional oriented product/design. The description of how outstanding designers work and think, is the core of this necessity; in emotional design field though. Do you think gathering all tools and data Dr.Horvath asserted in the very first comment, could lead to an answer for this? 

Thank you so much 

sorry to bother you after 2 years of publishing the question

I partly used the picture and text that Prof. Horvath provided, not for generating a methodology, rather for proposing a new framework of DT...

I guess prof. never see this comment to answer, so, anyone to know How can I cite?

and for Mr. Mahmoudi

instead of new methodology, you might decide to focus on "designing new toolkit"... a good alternative just like as "positive design lab" in TUdelft worked on...

Nice thread, and I also sorry for finding it too late... I guess it depends on the object of design and the nature of emotions. Emotions in what connection? Personally I'm considering hermeneutical phenomenology since emotions require deep understanding of the user so mainly qualitative strategies...