Designing Affective Chef’s Knives

Abstract

In this study, functional and aesthetic attributes of a chef’s knife were manipulated when designing prototype knives such as the form of the handle, the colour of the handle, and the material and thickness of the handle to determine how they influence apparent usability and functional quality. These two constructs were then put in relation to the affective quality of the product. A full factorial experiment was conducted using two levels of each independent variable. Sixteen prototype knives were designed. One hundred and twenty (120) subjects whom are culinary students, cooks, chef’s assistants, and housewives participated in the experiment. Results indicate that both functional and aesthetic attributes were significant in the apparent usability and functional quality of a chef’s knife. Specifically, for a chef’s knife, the aesthetical attribute, and hue intensity was found to be insignificant while all other product attributes which are the thickness, form and material type of the handle was found to be significant. The insignificance of hue intensity was due to the varying taste of users. Finally, both functional and aesthetic attributes were found to be insignificant in affective quality.