A Car Styling-based Study: The Designer’s Intension And User’s Interpretation

This research is granted by National Program on Key Basic Research Project(973Program) and commercial car styling design projects, which focuses on twobasic theoretical questions: Firstly, as an important human practice, design takescommunication as its main purpose. Therefore, the basic research question is thedesign phenomena and patterns of communication which contain the designer’sintention, the users’ interpretation and the communicating channels. Secondly, theresearch on car styling is an important design research domain that needs specializedskills, expertise and a complete design work flow. Therefore, the study focuses on thenature, structure, pattern and method of the design communication between thedesigner’s intention and the user’s interpretation in car styling. The research hasprovides important theoretical and practical meaning by enhancing the capacity ofdescribing, communicating and creating in the automobile design.The main research method involve “case analysis”,“questionnaire” and “survey”,including five cases which are the Transportation&Automobile Design course inPolitecnico di Milano, the Alfa Romeo Brand History and Facelifts Research, theZhongqi C-class Executive Car Design, the Zhongqi A-class Passenger Car Designand the HOWO Light Truck Design, two questionnaires and surveys which are theVehicle Style Key Adjective Questionnaire Survey and the Brand Style&Form ImageSemantic Questionnaire Survey and few investigations in Europe which are theinterviews of the Design Museums, Auto Shows and Exhibitions. Based on theseworks, and an extensive literature reviews, investigations and the analysis, this studybrings forward the theoretical frameworks, design patterns and communication model.The content of this thesis is as follow:Chapter I gives the definitions of research notions, terms and key problems basedon the design thinking and design cognition. The literature review includes thecognitive subjects which are the designers, the stylists and the users, the analysis onintention and interpretation, the research background and significances of this paper.Chapter II proposes the basic communication mode between the designer’sintention and user’s interpretation by case studies and phenomenological analysis, andalso proposes a form cognitive framework which is constructed by the cognitiveelements. Chapter III focuses on the capture, presentation of design intention, formgeneration, and the mapping patterns between them. This chapter proposes ageneration process model and shows how the design intention associated with theform cognitive element.Chapter IV focuses on the identification and explanation of users’ interpretation,recreation of meaning, and building the mapping between users’ interpretation andform cognitive elements. After analyzing the core semantic and semantic net in designconcept semantic space to uncover the users’ form image descriptions, it is found thatthe users’ interpretations are affected by their characteristics and roles in designprocess. This chapter builds a mapping pattern between the user’s interpretation andthe form cognitive element.Chapter V presents three automobile design types and design strategies which arecognition-oriented, a cognitive model of communication between designer’s intentionand users’ interpretation, and the corresponding design methodology.The main contributions of my research are in four areas:First, capturing and representing the design intention and form generation, thispaper proposes a bouncing evolution pattern that design is the result of back and forthbetween them. A complete design intention theoretical system is built from thegeneration process model, mapping pattern of design intention and form cognitiveelement. Studies suggest that the design intention refers to the central meaningexpressed through a variety of ways in the design process by designer in the form offeature and semantic. Design intention reflects the designer’s ideas and understandingof the design goals. The bouncing evolution pattern could be the way to understanddesign intention. And three types of design strategies which deal with the purposes ofproduct range design, product family design and the brand design is proposed ondifferent stage of brand development.Second, indentifying and explaining the user’s interpretation and meaningrecreation, I believe that user has a semantic space to describe the form image and therole of different user in design brings different interpretation. When facing a car andtry to understand it, user will use the semantic convergence (simplification), cognitivematch and novelty reaction to create a new meaning. So this paper establishs mappingpattern between user’s interpretation and car styling and brings a user interpretationtheoretical system which forms a complete car styling cognition system with thedesign intention part. This study suggests the user’s interpretation refers to theindividual product identification, interpretation and meaning capturing, which also has feature and semantic aspects. It reflects individual background knowledge, lifeexperience and aesthetic experience. The problem of understanding and recreatingprocess of user’s interpretation from the design point of view is an important researchinnovation of this article. In addition, this also happens in the design process, thereare different explanations cognitively as design format changed (such as sketches,renderings and models, etc.).Third, I analysis car styling systematically and define three key cognitiveelements, which are Volume, Treatment and Graphic. The Volume is the implicitentirety and gesture cognitive element associated with the car’s structure, layout, etc.The Treatment is the surface and feature cognitive element which are the basic cardesign language and style. The Graphic is priority cognitive element in the imageperception. Meanwhile, a framework is assumed to capsulate these elements. It’sbelieved that designer communicate with user through feature and semantic.In the end, I propose a communication model and design methodology, thendefine that a complete car styling design is to build a semantic net to connect designerand user with form feature. There are three parts in this model, which are the design’sintension part, the user’s interpretation part and the styling cognitive elements part. Itis these three parts constructing a design dialog on the car styling that makes thestyling meaningful. The designer shapes the intention, then creates a styling incognitive elements, called top-down procedure, while user perceives the styling, thenforms an interpretation, called bottom-up procedure. Finally, the design methodologybased on car styling cognition is built.This thesis extents the view point of car styling research from the designer’sintension to the user’s interpretation in order to build design research from an overallperspective of car design. Compared to seeking the pure styling in art, design is tocreate the beauty of form with reasonable structure and successful communication.The reasonable structure is the form cognition which has a basic regulation. Thesuccessful design communication needs concept and styling. The concept with clearsemantic makes the design transmissible and lasting, while the styling with typicalfeature guarantees the design attractive and eye-catching. The semantic and featurewhich is so-called double-coding is the fundament of the design communicationmodel. This theoretical model establishes the infrastructure of designerly ways ofknowing and brings the possibility to predict and understand how user figures out thedesign intension and brand image from the car styling.