Cognitive Approach of Emotional Symbol for the Elderly People

This research proposal hopes to understand whether the elderly people will be able to transfer the feelings from animate to inanimate (symbols)? What are the most important connotation and characteristics of emotional symbols for elderly people cognition? The psychological state is gradually changing for elderly people. Through mature emotional design can enhance the correct cognition of the elderly people and reduce the error due to the misunderstanding that could also increase the intimacy of product by emotional characteristics to raise the usability. This research will applies “emotional symbols questionnaire ”, “feel of emotion”, “design performance” and “preference”to find the characteristics of emotional symbols that effect on elderly people cognition, and with depth interviews to clarify the details, then generalize the cognitive factor of elderly people. The research will adds young people to be control group and the experimental results will be compared with elderly people that able to clearly understand the variation cognition between elderly and young people providing graphic designers reference in design for different groups.

Project ID:PE9807-1747
External Project ID:NSC98-2410-H182-018