How does car seat appearance influence perceived comfort

Tugra Erol, Cyriel Diels, James Shippen, Dale Richards, Chris Johnson

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

    8 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Automotive seat comfort has become a major aspect in differentiation and customisation amongst competitors in a highly saturated automotive market. Unlike discomfort, the concept of comfort is regarded a highly subjective and multi-faceted phenomenon. This paper describes an experimental study to explore the differences in the perception of comfort brought about by the mere manipulation of the visual appearance in otherwise two identical automotive seats. In particular it will investigate the hypothesised underlying mechanisms related to the concepts of product personality and affective responses, thereby proposing a theoretical model. In addition, as hypothesised the results showed significant gender effect where by female participants were found to be considerably more sensitive to the impact of visual appearance on comfort. The results are discussed in the context of potential underlying mechanisms relating visual appearance to aesthetics, emotion, and product personality and user image. Suggestions for future studies are provided with regards to visual design parameters and their effect on the perception of automotive seat comfort.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages172-180
    Number of pages9
    Publication statusPublished - 2016
    Event10th International Conference on Design & Emotion - Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Duration: 27 Sept 201630 Sept 2016

    Conference

    Conference10th International Conference on Design & Emotion
    Country/TerritoryNetherlands
    CityAmsterdam
    Period27/09/1630/09/16

    Bibliographical note

    The full text is available from: http://www.de2016.org/proceedings

    Keywords

    • Automotive seat
    • Comfort experience
    • Product appearance
    • Product personality
    • Self-congruence
    • seat comfort

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