Products with biomimetic shapes convey emotions more effectively

Abstract

Nowadays, a successful product should not only possess enhanced aesthetic quality and smart functionality, it should also satisfy consumers via the emotions they derive from using the product. Biomimetic designs are broadly used in product design to emphasize emotional interaction. Therefore, understanding the psychological effects of biomimetic products is becoming an important issue in the development of products with strong affective qualities. Adopting a cognitive-emotional approach, this study explored the emotions evoked in consumers by biomimetic products. This included an investigation of the following three hypotheses: (1) Consumers’ emotions can be influenced by products with biomimetic features; (2) The emotions evoked in consumers by concrete biomimetic features (i.e., human contours, facial shapes and plant shapes) are greater than those evoked by less concrete features. The results indicated that consumers have different degrees of emotional responses to products exhibiting different levels of biomimicry. Furthermore, the results also showed that consumers had different degrees of emotional responses to different types of biomimetic products. Additional results are also discussed in the paper.