Emotional Design with a function

This understanding of the relationship between emotional attachment and the senses, has led me to investigate the roles that touch plays in our everyday interactions with objects.  For example, human comfort is very closely tied to temperature, with its extremes, both high and low, capable of causing discomfort and even harm through touch.  We instinctively know that a metal chair should feel cooler to the touch than a wooden one.  We wrap both hands around our coffee mug and hold it close to our chest to warm us on a chilly day.  From these observations I developed my thesis work, Emotional Objects, in which I modified three everyday objects in order to actively call attention to their dynamic relationship with heat, and to provide the user with a deeper understanding of their interactions with these changing environmental conditions.

A teacup that shivers in response its tea going cold. A metal chair that heats up when you sit in it, revealing its aspirations to be warm and comfortable. A pan whose handle becomes impossible to grasp when it is too hot to touch with bare hands.  The animate characteristics of these everyday objects allow them to facilitate meaningful interactions with their users by actively responding to their environment and evolving through their conditions of use.  They inform the user about what they are, where they live, and how they should be used.  By incorporating dynamic behaviors into an object’s design, I believe it is possible to create emotionally satisfying bonds between products and their users. Perhaps in this manner, we will begin to create new forms of sustainable and emotionally satisfying human-object relationships, and positively impact our current culture of consumption.

Charlotte
http://www.design-emotion.com/2009/07/24/sustaining-the-human-object-relationship/