ABSTRACT
Senior Human Factors Specialist, Philips Design, Building W, Damsterdiep 267, P.O. Box 225, 9700 AE Groningen, The Netherlands
Course Leader, Product Design Engineering, Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G3 6RQ, Scotland
Human factors has tended to focus on pain. As a profession, it has been very successful in contributing to the creation of products that are safe and usable and which, thus, spare the user physical, cognitive and emotional discomfort. However, little attention seems to have been paid to the positive emotional and hedonic benefits — pleasures — that products can bring to their users. This paper examines the relationship between product semantics and pleasure in use, within the structure of the ‘Four Pleasure Framework’. Studies such as this represent human factors’ first steps towards establishing links between product properties and the types of emotional, hedonic and practical benefits that products can bring to their users.
