ABSTRACT
After being neglected for many years, a sudden interest in product affect has emerged. The affective side of product experience has become a ‘hot topic’, which is probably best illustrated by this conference and similar events over the past few years (e.g. Overbeeke and Hekkert 1999). A difficulty with affective concepts such as pleasure and emotion is that they are probably as intangible as they are appealing. Although some interesting and promising studies have been
reported, the research field is still short of conceptual clarity and therefore lacks consensus on what the actual subject of study should be. In fact, both the concepts of pleasure and emotion are somewhat undifferentiated; they are used as collective nouns for all kinds of affective phenomena. Design literature tends to refer to these when studying anything that is so-called intangible, nonfunctional, non-rational or, for that matter, non-cognitive. Some of the reported studies involve ‘experiential needs’ (Holbrook 1982), ‘affective responses’ (Derbaix and Pham 1991), ‘emotional benefits’ (Desmet, Tax and Overbeeke 2000), ‘customer delight’ (Burns, Barrett and Evans 2000) and ‘pleasure’ (Jordan and Servaes 1995). Naturally, it is inherent in any newly emerging research field that the emulsion has not even started to crystallise. On the other hand, an adequate definition of the subject of study would probably facilitate fruitful discussions between researchers.
