From Perception To Meaning

Image schema are some deep cognitive structures that widespread in human mind. They are some abstractive gestalt from experience that includes some basic spatial relations such as up-down, left-right, center-periphery, part-whole and some basic attributes of things such as big-small, bright-dark, slow-fast etc. They have their roots in sensation and perception while construct more and more complex thoughts by metaphorical extension which have the character of analogical thinking. Image schemas and metaphorical extensions can be seen as the bridge of sensation and meaning, thus run through the perceptual level, cognitive level and meaning level of design. Design has input and output, input start with sensation and perception, it’s the beginning of any user experience, from there, a series of information processing and product interaction draw meaning from experience, it’s the sublimation of design and the value of product and interaction in people’s hearts. Study this kind of deep cognitive structure can help to make clear a relationship among the input and output and draw an psychological sequence of thought in the development from perception to meaning in design.This paper has 9 chapters. The opening chapter gives a brief introduction. The second chapter makes a review of the theoretical background and origin of image schema and metaphorical extensions as well as their classification and psychological and physiological reality. The third chapter discusses the perceptual origin, coding features of image schema and when they acting as the media in creating of meaning. Fourth and fifth chapters are central issues of this paper which set forth the perception characteristics of image schema along with it’s use in design, moreover tries to search for the creative approaches inspiring by these characteristics. The sixth chapter combined with case studies to reveal more application problems of image schema in design. Seventh chapter discusses some relative problems of using image schema and their metaphorical extensions in design, such as the extraction and generation of image schema, the compatibility of image schema and their metaphorical extensions using in design, the cognitive conflict problem, the relationship of image schemas and the cultural differences problem. The eighth chapter aims the possibility of conducting image schema and their metaphorical extensions as a kind of design language which includes their practicability and reliability, as well how to use image schema and their metaphorical as an innovate method to transfer the deep structure to surface structure in design from a methodological point of view. The ninth chapter is a summary of whole paper.In conclusion, I hope to provide a way of design research based on the perspective of psychology and to bring some new possibilities to design innovate method through my study.