This paper explores the role of a designer's sense of engagement in early stage design. In the field of virtual reality, presence and immersion are standard measures of an individual's sense of engagement and involvement in an activity. High levels of presence might indicate that the designer is highly focused on the work. The central research question is: Do designers who are more engaged in design activity, as measured by presence and immersive tendency questionnaires, produce better designs? An experiment was conducted to assess presence and immersive tendencies within the context of a handson, open-ended design-and-build activity. Results indicate that designers' sense of immersion and presence ranged widely as well as their sense of frustration and calmness while performing the design activity. It was found that higher levels of presence correlated with either high design performance or, surprisingly, low design performance. Lower levels of presence correlated with average design performance. No correlations were found between immersive tendency and design performance. This study suggests that some level of presence can be linked with better design, and implies that level of presence might serve as an indicator of performance and learning in similar design-and-build activities. 2 IntroductionDesigners may employ a range of tools and techniques while involved in key activities in early stage design such as generating, selecting, and evaluating concepts. A range of tools may be used to explore and evaluate ideas in order to drive the design process forward, including sketching of possible design concepts [1][2][3][4][5][6] and the building of prototypes of design alternatives [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. In particular, the process of constructing physical prototypes of a design idea can uncover important design issues[15] that may not be apparent from a 2D representation such as a sketch. The studies referenced above demonstrate the value of tools for design, but don't consider how the designer personally experiences the process of designing. Some have noted that the hands-on experience of manipulating materials while building a prototype, including fabrication of components and assembly, provides the designer with an opportunity to reflect and interact with a design while exploring and evaluating the space of design concepts [16]. Indeed, the act of creating a design through sketching has been described as a "dialogue" with paper [17], suggesting that there is some level of engagement between the designer and the act of sketching.In studies of creativity, Csikszentmihalyi more generally discussed the notion of "flow" that experts experience while absorbed performing an activity that allows them to lose sense of time [18]. Flow is defined to be the feeling of full control over the activity [18]. It is characterized by concentrating and focusing of an activity, being intensely involved with clear understanding of goals and feedback. People in flow have a distorted sense of time. While presence is often descr...

Research suggests that, for the design of simple mechanisms, sketching and prototyping are somewhat interchangeable in terms of their influence on idea quantity and quality. This study explores whether this interchangeability holds true for a consumer product design activity. Three conditions are compared: sketching only, prototyping only, and free prototyping & sketching. Eighteen novice designers participated in a one-hour individual design activity. Their resulting design ideas were evaluated by both design experts and potential users. A design evaluation metric, idea distance, is proposed to measure the breadth and depth of design space exploration. Results showed that, individuals who only sketched, on average, generated more ideas, explored broader design space, and had more novel final designs. However, participants who were allowed to both sketch and build prototypes explored the design space in more depth and tended to have final ideas that were perceived as more creative. Individuals who only prototyped generated designs that were perceived to be aesthetically more pleasing and performed better functionally. Exploring broader design space was found to correlate with more unique ideas. However, exploring too broad a design space reduced the depth of idea exploration, and was negatively linked to the functional performance of the final designs.

Appearance is often key to the success of consumer-oriented products. However, few studies have been conducted to understand the role visual appearance plays in the adoption of renewable energy systems. This paper investigates the influence of visual appeal of renewable energy systems on consumer preference with a case study of residential solar panels. Two surveys of US residents were conducted with 194 and 350 responses, respectively. The first focused on aspects of solar panel appearance, including color, surface pattern and frame, while the second examined the tradeoffs between solar panel appearance, functional performance and price. Respondents were presented with two types of visual representations: solar panel images alone or solar panel images shown in the context of use. Results suggest that consumers in general prefer black solar panels with rounded-cornered and even-surfaced solar cells, and prefer the color of solar panels to match the color of the roof. It was also found that respondents were willing to pay a higher price for better-looking solar systems. This effect was found to be stronger with contextualized images of solar panels on roofs.

Eco-feedback design is a strategy for encouraging sustainable behavior by making users aware of the resources they consume. Reminding users of their resource usage can help them understand the environmental impacts of their actions and evoke feelings such as sympathy or responsibility for the environment. This study investigated two aspects of presenting resource usage information in eco-feedback designs: the quantitative clarity of the information, and the strength of emotion evoked by the designs. This paper examines how these two aspects of eco-feedback influence users’ perception and preference for the designs. Four design prompts with different levels of quantitative clarity and emotion were used to generate 16 designs. An online survey with these designs was distributed among students at four universities in two countries. Results from 216 valid responses showed evidence that both the quantitative and emotional aspects are important to the eco-feedback designs. The survey also gathered data about respondents’ knowledge about resource consumption. Results suggested that students in technical majors were generally better at estimating resource consumption, and tended to prefer designs with more quantitative data. In contrast, students in non-technical majors generally made less accurate estimates and tended to prefer designs that evoke stronger emotions. These findings could inform designers on how to make more effective eco-feedback designs to promote sustainable behaviors.

Emotional responses to a product can be critical in influencing how the product will be used. This study explores the emotions that arise from users' interaction with eco-feedback products, and investigates links between emotions and users' resource conservation behaviors. In-lab experiments were conducted with 68 participants of varying backgrounds. Each participant was shown sketches of four conceptual designs of eco-feedback products and reported how they would feel and behave in different scenarios using the products. Two styles of eco-feedback design, quantitative and figurative, were compared to each other and were compared to neutral designs, which had little or no feedback information. Results showed that taking resource conservation actions such as turning off lights was highly correlated with negative emotions toward wasting resources, such as guilt, upset, embarrassment, and annoyance. Users' evaluations of esthetics, usefulness, and overall quality of eco-feedback products, however, were highly correlated with positive emotions toward resource conservation, described as satisfied, proud, interested, and joyful. Figurative designs were observed to evoke much stronger emotions among younger participants than older ones. Ultimately, we hope our findings are useful to the designers of eco-feedback products.