The Research Of Product Design In The Form Of Substitution Based On The Emotional Memory Theory

This thesis makes an intensive study of the product design awaking people’s emotionalmemory, and how to use the form substitution design technique to wake up the emotionalmemory. Since the lack of emotion, the emotional design theory quickly swept the globe onceit were put forth. However, most emotional design does not convey emotion to consumers asthe designers’ wish, and a lot of emotion can only be triggered at the experience of the firstfew times. With the consumption psychology of “the grass is always greener”, when thenovelty of the product had worn off, the product would be forgotten in the corner of thestoreroom. The Uncertainty of the emotional awakens and the unsustainable of the emotionalexperience is the problem of emotional design that should be urgently solved.Taking the arousal of people’s deepest emotions as the starting point, the thesis made aconnection between the emotional memory theory and product design. From the theory ofemotional memory, memory is often accompanied by emotions, and emotions makememories more profound. Thus, designing from the perspective of memory can not onlyconduce to wake up the deepest emotions of people, but make the awake of emotion becamecontrollable as well.While exploring the delicate relationship between design techniques and memory, formsubstitution design technique is chosen as the center of the study. Although memory is formedby a multi-sensory stimulation, but the visual is the most common sense that causes emotionallink and memory formation. The form substitution design technique makes new products keepsome visual features of old objects. Catching sight of the new products, people would bebrought back to the old things and memories of the past because of their similar visualcharacteristics. Thus, people’s emotional memories would be effectively awakened. Cleveruse of the form substitution design technique can make the product become a key to open thedoor to space-time, causing the double resonance of the emotions and memories, thus helpingto keep the freshness of the experience, leading to unconscious design, meeting people’sspiritual implementation, and ultimately implementing the emotional regression of humanlife.From decoding to coding, the thesis firstly starts the research from people’s perception ofthe sign. Decoding the design that awake people’s emotional memory into evocative symbols,it makes a deeply study of how people’s emotional memory being awakened. Then the authordraws a conclusion of the relevance between memory resonance and the awake of emotionalmemory by classification, compare and analysis of cases. On this basis, the design elementsof awaking the emotional memory are summarized. At last, the author explores the designmethodology of form substitution based on the emotional memory theory, and finally demonstrates the feasibility of the method by a design practice.