The Research On The Formative Elements, Method And Cognition Of Products' Semantic Information

With the coming of Electronic Age, a new notion-Product Semantics was born. On one hand, with the appearance of black boxes in products, products have lost their demonstrative feature embodied by their forms and structure, which was the characteristic of products in Machine Age; on the other hand, with the development of the society, the abundance of material goods and the further market division, people are asking more for products' spiritual function. All of the above made a new demand on products design. After Krippendorff and Butter made a definition of "Product Semantics"?"Product Semantics is the study of the symbolic qualities of man-made forms in their use and the application of this knowledge to industrial design." in 1984, designers began to study to how to apply it to product design to improve the qualities of products.This dissertation, based on the above, mainly discussed the formation of a product's meaning and people's cognition about it. The formation of a product's semantic information is a process, involving the formative elements and methods, which can be realized through three aspects of a product's form: intention, expression and conveyance . "intention" is referred to the message or information embodied in products; "expression" is referred to designer's feelings and emotion; "conveyance" is referred to the presentation of a product's meaning and implication to the receivers (customers). The semantic information is a kind of experiential symbol which is related to psychological notions such as memory, association and imagination. When people get in touch with a new product, they would subconsciously compare it with symbols stored in their mind, from which they can make a judgment and get knowledge about what the purpose of the product and how to use it. This process begins with their perceptual knowledge about the product's image and proceeded by their association. After that, their personal understanding and emotion about the product come into being. In this process, different understanding can be evolved in different people. Therefore, designers should pay attention to motivating and directing the receivers' cognition process.In modern cultural context, what people demand on products design is not only an individual man-made article, but also an aesthetic and cultural environment or a living space full of aesthetic sights which can inspire cultural imaginations among people. Products, as creators of the aesthetic culture, are integrated into people's living and cultural environment and their behavior.In recent years, the further study of Semantics made in many fields of industrial design has been effectively applied to design education and design practice. The research on the formation of a product's meaning and people's cognition about it can help us tap the potentialities of Product Semantics and systemically grasp the theory, by which designers can enrich their ideas and make their design more purposeful.