The Role of the Designer in the Affective Design Process: the Principle of Accordance

Affective Design is gaining much attention from academic research and companies. In this paper, a research framework for assessing Innovation through Affective Design is presented. Moreover, Affective Design is correlated to Participatory Design through some definitions. The importance of an Affective approach during the earliest phases of design process is motivated. This study introduces Affective Design as a powerful approach in order to manage interactive Virtual Prototyping (iVP) methodology. The paper deals with issues regarding the great variability that iVP offers: the questions raised find answer in the notion of Accordance, which is defined on the basis of Product Semantics. A tool to implement iVP methodology with this approach is here presented. Finally, the results of a pilot study, qualitatively tested to assess the tool usability, are described.