The new thinking in emotional user experience: From visual metaphor to interactive affordance

Abstract

In our daily lives, products always catch our attention with form, color, texture, sound, meaning, and environment. Recently, products have become more intelligent and adaptive that they change people’s emotional expression and experience perception due to the more complex human-product interaction. This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework, which establishes a general understanding of the experience emerged from the interactive activities between people and technology, and the confusion within specific critical dimensions, which include subjective feelings, behavior, social practice, and knowledge. This study reveals the usability of products mainly depends on the designers’ understanding of the users’ need and perception. By setting a visual metaphor which promotes interactive affordance and enables users to be well acquainted with how to use at a glance, this study suggests that better design need to focus on better creation of user experience, which combines utilitarian and hedonic aspects. Therefore, the comprehensive consideration from users’ psychological and behavioral perspectives is essential. This study makes a relatively original contribution to exploring the importance of affordance in interaction design which invents products acceptance and adorable.