A Design Research Lab—An Integrated Model to Identify Conscious and Unconscious Behavior in the Design Process

• To understand how different design solutions affect users, designers traditionally use different evaluation methods that mainly rely on conscious feedback from the users. However, the complexity of human behaviour, where a large part is unconscious, point to a need for an extended tool box addressing the part not accessible to human conscious knowledge. Here, we describe a design research lab where traditional methods are complemented with tools to measure physiological signals influenced by emotional and sympathetic responses. These tools include galvanic skin response (GSR), electrocardiograph (ECG), and electroencephalograph (EEG). Typical sessions with acquired data of conscious and unconscious user reactions are described. The large body of data collected, which also require non-design expertise for interpretation, suggest that a further development towards simplified output data of the unconscious reactions is needed to allow wider use within industrial design work.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Design (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Design (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Design methods

User studies

Design pedagogy

Design research

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)