Neuroscience and Emotional Design

In recent years, it is generally accepted that a major current focus in product design is how to satisfy users’ emotional needs except for the specific utility, and the industry and academics have paid extensive attention to emotional design. Customarily, product design relies on the designers’ inspiration. Unfortunately, these products might not be accepted by the consumer. As a consequence, it is worthwhile to investigate consumers’ subjective perceptions of product design. Many methods have received numerous attention and have been employed in the discovery and acquisition of a user’s feelings and perceptions. Traditionally, the Kansei word is commonly adopted to extract users’ perceptions of product features. In this case, users will be usually required to make their assessments of product features by using some Kansei words. Theoretically, since these assessments are generally subjective, the Kansei data obtained by Kansei words results in more or less evaluation uncertainty. Therefore, users may have trouble verbalizing affections that are elicited by product features, and the results of such a study will not convey the truth, and then mislead the direction of design.

More recently, few investigations have been done on neuroscience measurements to grasp the Kansei data, such as electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), event-related potentials (ERPs), eye movements, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), heart rate variability (HRV) and facial expression. However, previous studies have failed to consider the multimodal measurement, uncertainties and ambiguities still exist in verbalizing emotions by using physiological measurements. Further studies are still essential in Kansei data multimodal measurement with the collaboration of psychological questionnaires and various physiological measurements. If we wish to get a good solution to reach the best Kansei product, it would be the best way to find the new technology for reaching the good Kansei product by means of the combined neuroscience approaches.

The aim of this special issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience is to introduce advanced neuroscience methods in emotional design research. The special issue embraces the application of advanced neuroscience methods in emotional design to generate new insights and shed new light on existing methodologies and theories. In addition, methodological advances in the neuroscience method in emotional design will also be considered. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: Neuro design; Neuroaesthetic; Neuroergonomics; NeuroIS; Neuromarketing; Brain-Computer Interfaces; Affective Brain-Computer Interactions; Emotional Design; Human-Computer Interaction; Affective Computing; Kansei Engineering; Human Factors and Ergonomics; User Experience Design; Emotional AI; Multi-modal Emotion Measurement; Cognitive Neuroscience