He la nd e r, Kha lid a nd Tha m (Ed ito rs) Pro c e e d ing s o f The Inte rna tio na l C o nfe re nc e o n Affe c tive Hum a n Fa c to rs De sig n Ase a n Ac a d e mic Pre ss, Lo nd o n, 2001 A Design Language for Products: Designing for Happiness Oya Demirbilek a , and Bahar Sener b a University of New South Wales, Faculty of the Built Environment Industrial Design - Sydney 2052, Australia b Loughborough University, Department of Design and Technology, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, England Abstract In order to explore the issues surrounding semantics and emotional design this paper presents a literature survey of recent trends in designing for daily life products with examples of designs and semantic applications to design. Emphasis is given to products that are said to convey and/or evoke ‘emotions’ to the users. “How to design such products? What are the attributes that can convey emotions? How to evoke emotions with a product?” are just a few of the questions that arise into minds. Related literature and results of recent design awards, with selected product examples, have been reviewed. Consequently, products said to convey emotions were examined. Keywords: emotional products, happiness in design, emotional design. 1. Introduction The world, as well as the practice of design, is changing as reflected in materials technology, production technology, information-processing technology and elsewhere. The changes in technology are occurring at a speed and scale beyond any expectation. Traditional industrial design is mainly changing direction because of the fact that the digital revolution is more and more turning the objects with which we interact into black boxes (Boltz, 2000). With reference to the changing society, conservation of resources and energy, emerging environmental problems, and customer-oriented trends, design today takes place in a different framework than ever before (Ohira, 1995; Jones, 1997). Accordingly, whether driven by advertisement and marketing strategies, or trends and fashion, or even social events, the expectation of users in consumer products has been changing constantly. Functionality, attractiveness, ease-in-use, affordability, recyclability, safety are all attributes that are expected as a given in a product; and users are expecting more out of their everyday products. Recent trends are towards objects that inspire users, enhance their lives, arising emotions or even evoking dreams into their minds (Jensen, 1999; Alessi, 2000). 2. Products as communicators of meaning All manufactured products, intentionally or not, make a statement through their shape and form. They communicate with users and can never be contextually neutral. It is widely recognised that visualisation is important when it comes to assessing the feasibility of a product in terms of appearance, functionality, production feasibility, product semantics, ergonomics and social factors (Johanson, 2000). Regardless of how designer use colour, shape, form, and texture in composing the product, messages are being sent through products. Designers should know what message they wish to transmit and the sort of response that can be expected from the user being the receiver in that case. According to Griffin (1999), the process of interpreting meaning from unfamiliar products for user involves two different reactions. The first one based being on knowledge, dependent on social and cultural background, and the second reaction being emotional. Meaning is then interpreted based on associations drawn from prior experience (Friedlaender, 1984). Being one of the most important trends in design, in the US, product semantics is an approach to developing a visual vocabulary in products in order to give them an immediately identifiable set of visual clues that reflect