Characterizing and Evaluating Aesthetic Features in Vehicle Design
Year: 2011
Editor: Chakrabarti, A.
Author: Ranscombe, Charlie; Hicks, Ben; Mullineux, Glen; Singh, Baljinder
Section: Design Aesthetics, Semiotics, Semantics
Page(s): 792-799
Abstract
The design and development of vehicles requires large investment compared with most mass produced products. Consequently there is a large financial risk associated with the commitment to develop and produce new vehicles. It is also known that aesthetics have a major influence on a vehicle’s desirability and subsequent commercial success. Similarly, brand perception of the vehicle manufacturer greatly influences desirability and judgments of quality and is shown to be closely linked to aesthetic features. Some attributes of potential vehicle designs such as fuel economy or performance, can be evaluated quantitatively and thus superior designs easily identified. In contrast aesthetic features and their subsequent impact on brand perception are subjective and thus much harder to evaluate. Currently such evaluations are based on designers’ previous experience and intuition. This paper presents a preliminary study that explores the creation of a tool aiming to help designers to evaluate aesthetic features of vehicles and reveals that certain aesthetic features have a greater impact on consumer response to designs than others.
Keywords: Aesthetics, Features, Vehicle Design, Research Methodology