Abstract:

Successful products are those that attract the users’ visual interest, and subsequently positively influence their preferences. The designer, however, relies largely on intuition and subjective inferences while designing a product, since the aspects of visual assessments are primarily procured with subjective feedbacks on form. In this context, what is required, but currently lacking, in design practice is prior knowledge of user’s visual perceptions and form requirements, as well as a methodological structure to help the designer in the creative process of product design and styling. Current research intervenes in this area and aims to provide knowledge which will empower designers in the process of designing and re-stylization of products at an early stage in the design process. The industry launches new products or extends stylistic alterations of existing products to attract consumers through this initial visual dialogue provoked by the product appearance. They offer novelty within the existing product design and marketing range, which may visually suggest novelty or atypicality to stand out amongst the rest. From this context, a pressing need emerges for designers to style novel or atypical products. However, whether typical or atypical, it is difficult to determine which form of a product may evoke and sustain visual interest.

We therefore take an exploratory route to determine the effect of aspects like A/typical designed object, the motivation to view and the effect of various respondent categories on visual response, in two experimental studies using eye tracking. The exploratory studies undertaken are on prototypes of a safety helmet and styling of an auto-rickshaw at concept development stage. The studies use 2D image representations of these designed objects.

It was observed that for helmet forms, the visual interest increased with an increase in the degree of atypicality in the design. By contrast, in the visual responses to the auto-rickshaw styling, it was observed that the atypical design that was most congruent with existing/typical designs of the vehicle generated greater visual interest than those designs that differed substantially from the existing form. Products that display complete form changes as observed in the Safety Helmet experiment; may evoke a consistently higher visual response towards atypical forms, unlike the concepts that make incremental changes to form features such as the autorickshaw concepts, where the atypical concept with a combined visual balance of congruence with the typical concept evokes and sustains maximum visual interest. Further, for design concept placements of typical and atypical, the increased or decreased visual interest is observed to be based on the dual ability of - individual features to evoke visual attention, as well as the - organizational effect of these features, that help sustain it. Additionally it was found that visual response of designers and non designers differ. Not only does their visual processing vary, it is characterized by visual scrutiny that is almost converse to each other that is apparent in both experiments as observed in the time course. Though contextual, the learning arising from the studies contribute towards visual assessment of product appearance by providing insights on the observer’s visual exploration strategies.