Beyond Surprise: A Longitudinal Study on the Experience of Visual-Tactual Incongruities in Products

During everyday activities people almost continuously use products, and while doing so they experience a variety of emotions (Desmet, 2008; Richins, 1997). Someone may, for example, experience anger because his or her computer is not functioning properly, or someone may experience joy while riding a new bicycle. To some extent, designers can influence the emotions people experience when they are using products. In this paper, we focus on how designers may deliberately create surprising products in order to attract attention to their products or to let users experience something new. One of the strategies designers use to create surprising products is incorporating visual-tactual incongruities (Ludden, Schifferstein, & Hekkert, 2008). Upon seeing such an object, an expectation will be formed about how the product feels, based on the visual impression of the product, previous experiences with that product, or experiences with similar products. Eventually, upon touching the product, the expectation is disconfirmed, resulting in a surprise reaction. An example of such a product is a vase that looks like a familiar crystal vase, but that is made out of plastic and, therefore, feels much lighter than people expect. Previous studies have demonstrated that products with visual-tactual incongruities indeed surprise people (Ludden, Schifferstein, & Hekkert, 2009). Degree of Incongruity