Paper Title
Affective Design of Functional Products for the Elderly
Abstract
Based on the theory of charm engineering, this study adopts the methods and steps of user research and divides the whole
process into three stages: (1) survey and categorization of functional household items for the elderly; (2) interview with the high
involvement elderly regarding their affective preference; (3) questionnaire survey and statistical analysis of the representative
functional household item for the elderly. Early results show that (1) in terms of product search ratio, mobility assisting and
communication products have the highest proportion; (2) in terms of product sales ratio, mobility assisting products reaches 25% and
footwear products are the highest among them; (3) interviews with high-involvement elderly show that footwear with 40.8% is the
highest demand among functional household items. Therefore, footwear products will be used as example to conduct subsequent
study on affective preference and affective design for the elderly.
Index Terms - Affective design, Elderly, Functional products, Kansei engineering, High-involvement, Miryoku engineering