In this work1, José Lugo and I present a methodology to elicit the esthetic preferences for product shapes in three dimensions using quantifications of the Gestalt principles of symmetry, parallelism and continuity and leveraging discrete choice experimentation and virtual reality.
What is it about?
This work studies subjects’ esthetic preferences for a product with respect to variations in some of its form’s salient properties. Pairs of different bottle shapes with different combinations of low and high measures of the Gestalt principles of symmetry, parallelism, and continuity are presented to subjects who are then asked to choose the shape they like the most. The discrete choice experiment is carried out within a virtual reality environment, which eliminates the need for fabrication of test specimens.
Why is it important?
This proof-of-concept highlights the power of discrete choice modeling and experimentation for studying user preferences and the advantages of carrying human subject studies in virtual reality environment. The potential for assessing the part-worth utilities of each quantified Gestalt principle and how they are correlated allows designers to better understand the esthetic, semantic, and functional tradeoffs around the form of a product. Although we focused on a generic bottle shape — making the results specific to it — and we were limited by a small sample size, this methodology can be extended to other product form abstractions2 and in alternative settings (e.g., online experiments).3
- Valencia-Romero A, Lugo JE (2017) An immersive virtual discrete choice experiment for elicitation of product aesthetics using Gestalt principles. Design Science, 3: e11. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2017.12. ↩︎
- Valencia-Romero A, Lugo JE (2016) Part-worth utilities of Gestalt principles for product esthetics: A case study of a bottle silhouette. J Mech Des, 138(8), p. 081102. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4033664. ↩︎
- Valencia-Romero A, Lugo JE (2016) Quantification of symmetry, parallelism, and continuity as continuous design variables for three-dimensional product representations. ASME Paper No. DETC2016-59707. https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2016-59707. ↩︎