DEVELOPING A METHODOLOGY FOR DESIGN FOR AESTHETICS BASED ON ANALOGY OF COMMUNICATION

Although attempts have already been made, computer support of industrial design is still in its infancy, especially of design for aesthetics. The reason is that no methodology is available to incorporate in computer support, design aspects like appearance, pleasantness and human usage of a product. The objective of the paper is to present a methodology that facilitates development of computer support of design for aesthetics. While a designed product can trigger definite aesthetic responses to observers, it is not easy to relate these responses to the characteristics of the product. For that reason the paper focuses on the issues related to a practical coupling of intended aesthetic impressions and shape design. First it summarizes the fundamentals and knowledge related to aesthetics. Then it compares two studies on phenomenological and systematic approaches that have been carried out to model user responses to products and to identify possibilities for designers to influence those responses with the geometric design of products. Based on the generalization of the experiences a novel methodology for unifying aesthetics and design is introduced following the analogy of information communication. The problem of realizing aesthetic intents is decomposed into an activity loop that extends to statistical, syntactical, semantical and pragmatic levels of communication. Our initial experiments and tests have shown that the information communication analogy helps understanding the core problem of design for aesthetic and supports the elaboration of a quasi-formalized methodology that serves well as a base of computer tool development.