Design aesthetics play a crucial role in product design. Stakeholders expect to develop highly valuable premium products by improving the design aesthetics of products. Nevertheless, the question of how to evaluate the value of design aesthetics has not been fully addressed. In this study, the effects of design aesthetics on the evaluation of the value of a product were investigated through a strictly controlled experiment in which the neural responses of the participants were measured. Forty participants completed the design aesthetics experiment in a laboratory setting. Images of products were divided into two categories: those representing high- and low-design-aesthetic stimuli. Both types of images were labeled with the same price. Overall, the images representing high design aesthetics elicited smaller N100 and lower P200 amplitudes than did the images representing low design aesthetics. This finding indicates that low design aesthetics attracted more attention than high design aesthetics did and that high design aesthetics triggered positive emotions. Low-design-aesthetic products elicited a larger N400 amplitude. This finding reveals the inconsistency between labeled and expected prices. The present study indicates that the N400 component can be used as an indicator for measuring the perceived value of a product in a future product design study. Our study provides event-related potential indicators that can be easily applied in decision making for measuring the perceived value of a product's design.
Keywords: ERPs; aesthetic experience; innovation; product form; value evaluation.
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