Exploring the relationships between product meanings

Products should sustain their durability while offering positive product experiences leading to perceived product meanings. Product affordances, product semantics, emotions, and the experiences that products offer have been studied extensively in recent years. Previous studies have explored the link between the physical qualities of product forms and their perceived meanings. However, the relationships between different product meanings remain less understood. This experimental study aims to investigate these interrelationships, proposing that certain perceived product meanings may trigger additional meanings, which can be associated, linked, or disconnected. Participants interacted with nine hard drives and nine soap dispenser prototypes while they provided insights on certain perceived meanings during the experiment. Each prototype has similar physical qualities except the edges and corners are manipulated incrementally from sharp to round. The data were converted to relatedness scores to conduct pathfinder networks to reveal local interactions and the multidimensional scaling method to explore global relations between perceived product meanings. Results indicate that several product meanings coexist and influence one another. Drawing on the results, the study introduces an “interactionist framework of product meanings” emphasizing interaction-centered user engagement along two identified dimensions: “repulsive or inviting for interaction” and “readiness for interaction”. Accordingly, designers are encouraged to strategically assign meanings to product forms by leveraging the framework's structure, prioritizing central product meanings, and their associated peripherals, as well as context-dependent and bridging meanings. This approach seeks to facilitate the development of more targeted and effective meaning-driven design strategies.

Relevance to industry: This study provides evidence that perceived product meanings coexist and interact dynamically. The presence of a specific meaning can trigger additional meanings due to the shared qualities of product forms. The interactionist framework of product meanings introduces two dimensions for understanding how product forms can guide user responses. Designers may benefit from emphasizing central product meanings within these dimensions, using them to modulate peripheral and bridging meanings, thereby fostering specific interaction tendencies. These insights empower industry professionals to create product forms that resonate with users through targeted and meaningful interactions.