Product design is now a mainstay in the working vocabularies of companies worldwide. We’d go so far as saying that it (product designs) may now be entering the portion of its lifespan where strategic maturity and academic thought are now taking up the centre stage as the cheap tricks and skin deep strategies cant hold up to the lofty tasks at hand that product designers will have to solve in this coming decade.

With that in mind, we have compiled a set of research papers which have a sometimes obvious and sometimes not-so-obvious link into product design. All in all, the idea is to create a list of resources that help back up your cognitive process when thinking out the broad strokes of how you can approach your product.

These research papers encapsulate academic concepts and heuristics which could be employed to deliver meaningful experiences.

1. Personality of Interaction: Expressing Brand Personalities Through Interaction Aesthetics

This research paper relates attributes of interactive experience to ‘brand personality’, a common way of quantifying how a brand should be perceived. It shows that particular characteristics of interactivity, are related to particular brand traits and reflect the brand personality.

Read the research paper here.

2. Investigating a multi-faceted view of user experience

This study explores the influence website design and brand has on its users’ experience. Content, usability, aesthetics, pleasurable interaction, service quality, and overall judgement by the participants of the study was assessed through questionnaires and interviews. Read on to find out what were users prime preferences.

Read the research paper here.

3. Simple Beauty: The impact of visual complexity, prototypicality and color typicality on aesthetic perception in initial impression of websites

An attractive design is a crucial criterion for users while deciding whether to stay on a website or leave it. Beauty appraisals are affected within 17 milliseconds by visual complexity, prototypicality and color.

The “first impression’ is what counts the most. Based on cognitive psychology, social psychology, and human-computer interaction studies, the research demonstrates that the first impression is considered a base for developing general opinions regarding an object and its subsequent behaviour.

Read the research paper here.

Also read: Aesthetic Usability Effect

4. Cross-cultural applicability of user evaluation methods

This research is a case study amongst Japanese, North-American, English and Dutch users. It investigates the cultural applicability of user evaluation methods. It sheds light on how some user evaluation methods are less applicable than others are for a culturally diverse user base.

Read the research paper here.

5. Culture-based User Interface Design

The culture-based user interface design is a new field in interface design, crucial for designers of all disciplines. Companies are no longer satisfied with websites that merely look good, they must also serve users’ cultural needs. Only with good culture-based user interface design will there be the perception of value among its customers.

Read the research paper here.

User Experience is primarily about delivering a sense of authentic joy to a human, without a firm understanding of contexts, culture, human nature, and persuasive argument, you will be unable in delivering what we as product designers all sought after.

Use these resources in the coming year (and decade) and see if they provide you with a new dimension at looking into your product and the emotions it generates with your users.