www.ijdesign.org 41 International Journal of Design Vol.3 No.2 2009 Introduction Emotional design, which is designing products with the intention to evoke or to prevent elicitation of certain emotions, can be facilitated by an understanding of emotional processes. In the design literature, several models and frameworks that aim to contribute to this understanding have been proposed (Jordan, 1999 Desmet, 2002 Norman, 2004). Jordan (1999) investigated different sources of product pleasures: physiological, psychological, sociological, and ideological. Physiological pleasures involve bodily sensations psychological pleasures are about achievements of the self sociological pleasures are the pleasures of social interaction and ideological pleasures are about intellectual stimulation. A product can be designed to enhance each of these pleasure sources. Desmet (2002) investigated how product appearance evokes emotions and proposed that appraisal theory can be used to explain how products elicit emotions. A product appraisal is an automatic assessment of the effect of a product on one���s well-being. Desmet proposed four main types of product appraisals: the relation of a product to one���s goals, the sensorial appeal of the product, the legitimacy of an action represented by the product, and the novelty of the product. Norman (2004) also focused on the mental processing that gives rise to affective responses. He identified three levels of processing: a visceral level governing responses through direct perception, a behavioral level involving learnt but automatic affective responses, and a reflective level involving affective responses due to conscious thinking. In line with those levels, Norman proposed three design strategies: design for appearance (visceral design), for ease of use (behavioral design), and for reflective meaning (reflective design). Because the appraisal perspective is more abstract than the other two, it may not be as easy to apply in design practice. However, an advantage is that it combines the main propositions that underlie the other two perspectives. This means that the pleasure and processing perspectives can be explained in terms of the appraisal framework. The pleasure types that Jordan (1999) proposes basically correspond to different types of motive consistency, a particular appraisal type. Moreover, different levels of mental processing, as identified by Norman (2004), coincide with different levels of appraisals. Smith and Kirby (2001) identified three levels of processing in appraisals: appraisals that involve (1) direct perceptions (such as pain sensations) that do not require the activation of mental representations (visceral level), (2) automatic associative processes that activate memories of previous experiences outside of the consciousness (behavioral level), and (3) conscious reasoning (reflective level). The comprehensiveness of appraisal theory renders it a prominent perspective in psychology. However, like other psychological theories, it does not focus on our relationships with products. In this paper, we explore and investigate ways to conceptualize and operationalize appraisals for the domain of product design. In Received March 28, 2009 Accepted July 4, 2009 Published August 31, 2009 Copyright: �� 2009 Demir, Desmet, and Hekkert. Copyright for this article is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the International Journal of Design. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. By virtue of their appearance in this open-access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. *Corresponding Author: e.demir@tudelft.nl Appraisal Patterns of Emotions in Human-Product Interaction Erdem Demir*, Pieter M. A. Desmet, and Paul Hekkert Department of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Emotional design, i.e., designing with an intention to evoke or to prevent a particular emotion, can be facilitated by understanding the processes underlying emotions. A promising approach to understanding these processes in the current psychological literature is appraisal theory. Appraisal theory can support this understanding because it explains how different emotions are elicited by different underlying appraisals. This paper reports a study that aimed to identify and specify appraisals that elicit emotions of product users for four emotion groups: happiness/joy, satisfaction/contentment, anger/irritation, and disappointment/dissatisfaction. The study started with a sensitizing task to make participants familiar with reporting their emotional experiences. With a combination of experience sampling and in-depth interviews, the emotions experienced when interacting with products and the causes of these emotions were captured. The results indicated that the appraisal patterns as proposed in general appraisal theory can also be traced in human-product interaction for all four emotion groups. On the basis of the results, an initial specification of those appraisals and design directions are proposed. Keywords - Appraisal Components, Human-Product Interaction, Designing for Emotions. Relevance to Design Practice - Insights gained in this study can support emotional design as they contribute to providing a structure for emotional design activities. Emotional design can be reformulated as design with the intention to activate or to prevent activation of appraisals of the intended emotions. Citation: Demir, E., Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2009). Appraisal patterns of emotions in human-product interaction. International Journal of Design, 3(2), 41-51. SPECIAL ISSUE ON DESIGN & EMOTION

www.ijdesign.org 42 International Journal of Design Vol.3 No.2 2009 Appraisal Patterns of Emotions in Human-Product Interaction doing so, we hope to assist those who want to use appraisal theory for understanding or explaining emotions experienced in human- product interactions. Perspectives on Appraisal An appraisal, in the cognitive tradition of emotion psychology, is defined as a quick evaluation of a situation with respect to one���s well-being (Frijda, 1986 Lazarus, 1991). Although appraisals are mostly automatic and nonverbal, just to simplify the concept, and without claiming theoretical tenability, we can think of an appraisal as an answer to the question, ���What does this situation mean for my well-being?��� If the answer given to this question is positive (beneficial to my well-being), a pleasant emotion occurs. In contrast, a negative answer (harmful to my well-being) evokes an unpleasant emotion. For instance, in a frustrating situation, such as when a word processor does not respond while one is trying to finish a document before a tight deadline, the answer to this question is most likely to be negative, and a negative emotion such as anger or worry is likely to occur. Appraisal literature reports two prominent approaches in describing and differentiating between appraisals: thematic and componential. In the first approach, appraisals are described in terms of summary statements that reflect the overall personal meaning of a situation, known as appraisal themes. Each discrete emotion involves a distinct overall personal meaning. For instance, for sadness the overall meaning is an irrevocable loss, whereas for joy it is a progress towards realization of a goal (Lazarus, 1991). When a situation is appraised as an irrevocable loss, be it the end of a romantic relationship or the loss of a cherished object, sadness is the resulting emotion. In the second approach, appraisals are not described in terms of a single and basic question, but in terms of several questions, each focusing on a different aspect of the situation: ���How does this situation relate to my motives?���, ���To what extent was this situation expected?���, ���Who or what is responsible for this situation?���, among others. The answers given to each of these questions are named as appraisal components and each discrete emotion involves a particular pattern of those components (Roseman, 2001 Scherer, 2001). For instance, pride involves appraising a situation as consistent with one���s motives and caused by one���s own person (Roseman, 2001). Both approaches can be useful in understanding and designing for emotions. The thematic approach provides more than the sum of the components and may provide a holistic understanding of the intended emotion. However, it may be difficult for designers to relate commonly reported themes like ���irrevocable loss��� or ���demeaning offense��� to emotional experiences with products. For that reason, in this paper, we have adopted the componential approach for describing appraisals. Although less holistic, this approach can be useful for writing clear design briefs because it facilitates a more systematic and fine-grained analysis of emotions. Appraisal theory asserts a causal relationship between appraisals and emotions, meaning that activation of a particular appraisal pattern results in the corresponding emotion. This implies that attempts to design for a particular emotion may be facilitated by an understanding of the appraisal pattern that elicits this emotion. In order to achieve this understanding, two main challenges have to be met. The first is to identify the appraisal components that are involved in the process that elicits emotions in human-product interactions. A complexity in this challenge is that appraisal patterns proposed by different theoreticians show minor differences in terms of involved components. As design researchers, we are not sure which of these components are most suitable for explaining emotions in human-product interactions. The second challenge is that the available appraisal components should be made more tangible because they are too abstract to be useful for design purposes. Say for instance, someone wants to design a telephone that elicits joy. According to appraisal theory, joy is experienced in response to an event that is consistent with one���s motives. Hence, the design should be consistent with the motives of the users. Given its general nature, this condition most probably does not provide the designer with additional insights. In this paper, both challenges are addressed with a three- phased explorative experience sampling study. The goals were (1) to identify the appraisal components of particular emotions in human-product interaction, and (2) to specify the identified components to make them more tangible for application in the design domain. Participants reported their emotional responses to products whenever they were prompted to do so by an SMS. In total, 170 emotion records were collected and elaborated on in a subsequent in-depth interview stage. These reports covered 29 different emotions, and the number of reports per emotion varied among different emotions. Given the variety in number of Erdem Demir is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. He received his M.Sc. degree from the Industrial Design department of the Middle East Technical University with a thesis focusing on user satisfaction and the underlying design-related dimensions. He also holds a M.Sc. degree from the Industrial Engineering department of the same university, with a thesis on genetic algorithms and their applications in logistics problems. His main research aim is to develop theory that can assist the designer in designing products that evoke intended emotions. The perspective of this project is based on cognitive emotion psychology, and his aim is to identify appraisals that are related to emotions elicited during user- product interaction. Based on the prospective model of interaction appraisals, he aims to develop, test, and apply ���design for emotion��� strategies. Pieter Desmet is an associate professor of form theory in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. He has a background in industrial design, and in 2002 he obtained his Ph.D. for research on emotional product experience. His main research interest is in the field of design, emotion, and subjective well-being. In cooperation with several international companies, he studies why and how consumer products evoke emotions. In addition, he develops tools and methods that can facilitate emotion-driven design. Desmet has published his research in several journals, and presented his work at international platforms. He is a co-founder and executive board member of the International Design for Emotion Society, and scientific advisor for SusaGroup, an organization that facilitates design for meaningful experience processes. Paul Hekkert is a full professor of form theory in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. There he chairs the design aesthetics section and supervises a research group that carries out innovative research on our sense perception and (emotional) experience of products. Much of this research is done in cooperation with industrial partners. Paul has published numerous articles on product experience and aesthetics in major international journals and is co-editor of ���Design and Emotion: The experience of everyday things��� [2004] and ���Product experience��� [2008]. Together with a colleague/designer, he also developed an interaction-centred design approach, called Vision in Product design (ViP), which is widely applied in both education and industry. He and his colleague are presently finishing a book in which this approach is laid out [publication in 2010]. Paul is founder and chairman of the Design and Emotion Society [www.designandemotion.org] and serves as a member of the editorial boards for The Design Journal, Empirical Studies of the Arts, and International Journal of Design.