Experiences and senses an experimental based methodology for the design optimization

Understanding users points of view is rapidly becoming an urgent issue for companies and designers, as well as User Experience and Experience Design proving to be of wide interest for academic research. This paper presents an experimental-based methodology aimed at guiding designers during product optimisation. It is meant to support designers in choosing the right strategy to assess the users emotional reaction towards a product at an early stage of product development. The methodology consists of three different phases: 1) Design Challenge definition, to help in clarifying the research question; 2) Interaction Study, aimed at understanding the user experience; 3) Sensory Boost phase, to improve the products perceived pleasurableness. The methodology includes a review of the methods and tools used for catching users emotional reactions to products. Moreover, a computer-based version of the methodology will be introduced, together with two case studies to validate the developed methodology.