2014 Asia Design Engineering Workshop (A‐DEWS 2014) NOVEMBER 20‐22, 2014, Taipei, Taiwan TOWARDS DESIGNING FOR “MAGICAL” USER EXPERIENCE: EVOCATION OF STAGE MAGIC PRINCIPLES IN PRODUCT EVALUATION David S. Watson King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi watson.d.aa@m.titech.ac.jp Céline Mougenot Tokyo Institute of Technology mougenot@mech.titech.ac.jp Chujit Treerattanaphan King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi chujit.jea@kmutt.ac.th ABSTRACT “Magical” user experiences represent interesting intents for designers to appeal to consumers. Our objective is to identify design elements that are likely to generate a magical user experience. In this study, we identified 13 “Stage Magic Principles” and mapped them into design elements that we called “Design Correspondences of Stage Magic Principles” (DCSMP). We then conducted a survey with 20 participants to assess the subjective perception of 8 products without DCSMP and 8 equivalent products with DCSMP. We identified a positive correlation between the use of DCSMP in the design process and the evocation of a “magical” user experience. As an outcome of this study, we provide a list of design elements that can be used for creating a magical user experience. KEYWORDS Magic, product evaluation, user experience, interaction design, creativity, affective engineering INTRODUCTION Consideration for emotional satisfaction is a market edge that companies are striving for. As microcontrollers and miniaturized computing are becoming ubiquitous, effects evoking “Magical experiences” represent some of the most interesting intents for designers to appeal to consumers. Although a large number of studies on pleasurable products and experiences, affective engineering and design creativity has been published, seldom investigation has been done on “magical user experiences”, also described as a magical moment or “wow” factor. In this context, the objectives of our research are to: (1) identify design elements that are likely to generate a magical user experience (2) create, subsequently, a guideline for designing for magical user experience. This paper reports the first part of the study, which investigates the role of magic principles in the evocation of magical experiences in human- product interaction. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part is a literature review of how design language and interaction design are related to creating magical experiences. The next section reports on the development of design framework using “Stage Magic Principles”. The last section reports a survey-based experiment investigating the potential for “Design Correspondences of Stage Magic Principles” to significantly evoke a feeling of “Magical User Experience”. 1. FROM MAGIC, TO DESIGN, TO MAGIC Products, spaces, and services must have a higher emotional dimension and attractiveness if they are to be successful and match new levels of consumer satisfaction (Desmet, 2012; Jordan, 2005). One of the highest emotional experience we encounter as users is the so-called “Magical Experience” from which derives “magical moment” and “wow factor”. Magical experiences are one particular affect among the large variety of user experiences. They are interesting and useful to research as they encompass several key factors in product attractiveness, emotional attachment, and usability, while also leading to innovation. In that context, development in design process for creative design involves interdisciplinary aptitude and adaptability of design language and new ways to think. Therefore, introducing stage