Emotional needs of car buyers and emotional intent of car designers

We investigated the emotional intent of car buyers and designers in two related studies. The first study involved 179 Asian and European car owners from 10 countries who were interviewed in a survey. The results showed that several car design descriptors gave similar emotional associations in Europe and in Asia. Clearly, car owners look beyond functionality to consider emotional design features. The affective descriptors of the Asian sample were used in a second study involving seven car designers from an automotive company in mainland China. They were instructed to include affective features in their design of a car dashboard after first designing without instructions to include those features. The designers had no previous experience of affective car design, but the results revealed emotional changes to their design. It can be concluded that car designers may need to learn how to include emotional design features as a design procedure.