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Design and Emotional Sustainability

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Prof. Dr. Deana C. McDonagh

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School of Art + Design/Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 408 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA
Interests: empathy; design research; emotions; industrial design; disability; aging in place

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Emotional sustainability refers to building an emotional attachment between the consumer and the product, service, and environment that continues to be useful, used, and valued beyond the initial interaction for the consumer. User-centered design places the person you are designing for at the heart of the decision-making process.

We are currently in an empathy economy, and responding to consumers functional and emotional needs will lead to more balanced design outcomes and products with longer shelf life. Empathy provides a deeper understanding of peoples’ needs to support sustained value. When empathic understanding is lacking, the result is in products being purchased and then abandoned, underused, or misused. Emotional sustainability maintains value, usefulness, and meaningfulness. Highly useful assistive technology products can become abandoned after purchase due to a lack of emotional connection between device and consumer.

This Special Issue of Sustainability offers a platform for advancing our understanding of the role of empathic understanding to support more effective design decision making. Design within this context includes (and is not limited to) products, services, and environments. It aims to draw together a collection of high-quality papers from diverse disciplines. We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit original research articles, case studies, reviews, critical perspectives, and viewpoint articles on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

User-Centered Design,
Empathy;
Industrial Design;
Product Design;
New Product Development;
Architectural Design;
Gerontology;
Lessons learned from research and professional practice;
Case studies: success, as well as failure, stories.

Prof. Dr. Deana C. McDonagh
Guest Editor

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Research

24 pages, 873 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Functional Needs, Emotions, and Perceptions of Coffee Consumers and Non-Consumers

by Antonella Samoggia, Margherita Del Prete and Chiara Argenti

Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5694; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145694 - 15 Jul 2020

Cited by 33 | Viewed by 19491

Abstract

Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages worldwide. Over the last decades coffee has become a specialty product. Drinking a coffee beverage entails several mixed factors, such as pleasure, experience, lifestyle, and social status. It can also provide an emotional pick-up, both mentally and physically. Only a few studies have explored the motives and emotions of coffee consumption and not consumption. There is limited understanding of consumers’ emotional approach towards coffee, and what influences a positive and negative inclination towards coffee consumption. This research fills the current research gaps by addressing three main questions: (i) What are the emotions and habits of coffee consumption? (ii) What are the motives of coffee consumption and non-consumption? and (iii) How relevant is the coffee health impact perception of consuming or not consuming coffee? The research activities include 467 face-to-face interviews with consumers. Interviews are performed in two different countries, Italy and Portugal. Data elaboration includes a principal component analysis carried out to identify latent factors on motives and emotions of consumption in both national groups, and to explore the relationship between the main emotions and consumers’ habits and socio-economic characteristics. Results support that consumers have positive emotions from coffee consumption. Perceived emotions are energy, satisfaction, and pleasure. Non-consumption is mainly driven by taste and fear of coffee’s health impacts. There are limited differences in the countries analysed. Socio-economic characteristics limitedly influence perceived emotions and consumption motives. To conclude, consumers are increasingly interested in new coffee products. Understanding the functional and emotional factors of coffee consumption contributes to supporting new coffee product development and commercialisation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design and Emotional Sustainability)

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24 pages, 782 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Does Sustainable Perceived Value Play a Key Role in the Purchase Intention Driven by Product Aesthetics? Taking Smartwatch as an Example

by Jian Wang and Yen Hsu

Sustainability 2019, 11(23), 6806; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236806 - 30 Nov 2019

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 6563

Abstract

In the face of a wide range of consumer electronic products, how can consumers take into account the sustainable development of the ecological environment during their purchase and consumption? This study established a new product aesthetics classification, divided it into interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics, and proposed a new conceptual model to test the impact of interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics on sustainable perceived value and purchase intention. In this study, smartwatches were used as the subject and a two-stage survey was carried out to collect samples from common consumers of consumer electronic products. Partial least squares (PLS) was employed to test the conceptual model and corresponding hypotheses on data collected from 425 survey samples. The research results suggested that interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics must be mediated by sustainable perceived value so as to have a positive impact on consumers’ purchase intention. Therefore, sustainable perceived value is a mediating variable for adjusting product aesthetics and purchase intention. In addition, sustainable perceived value greatly affects consumers’ green consumer behavior. Increasing the emotional durability established between consumers and products through sustainable perceived value to prolong the life of products reduces resource consumption and wave costs, and promotes sustainable development of ecological resources. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design and Emotional Sustainability)

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