Newer is better! The influence of a novel appearance on the perceived performance quality of products
Understanding how consumers perceive products based on their appearance is of great importance to designers. In this article, we explore the level of novelty of a product appearance as a general design guideline to evoke positive associations about the product's performance quality.
Novelty implies the deviation in a product appearance from the current design state. Based on the literature, we theorise that consumers associate products with a novel appearance with technological advancement and thus with a greater performance quality. Data from two studies in which participants
were asked to evaluate washing machines and single-lens reflex cameras support our expectations that the level of novelty of a product appearance positively affects the perceived performance quality of the product.
Keywords: aesthetics; design guidelines; product perception; quality issues; user evaluation
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Product Innovation and Management,Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15Delft,2628CE, The Netherlands
Publication date: 01 June 2012
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Subscribe to this Title
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content