The Mechanisms of Product Form Classification

The purpose of this study is to explore the users’ process mental models of classification task. Hierarchical grouping and image tests are conducted to analyze the way they classify the real product samples of mobile phones. From the database of similarity and image tests, cluster analyses were used to analyze the distribution of total images and form features (the form treatments) in the tree diagram of product form classification. The result indicated that local features are the dominant mechanism. Moreover, the verbal descriptions of hierarchical grouping task demonstrated that in the process of product form classification, subjects first employ local features and later total images step by step in the classification procedure. The mental models the users employ in processing product form classification confirm the cognitive models preliminarily proposed by other scholars. At the early stages, product form classification is mainly dominated by the bottom up process (local features), and at later stages, the top-down process (total image) will gradually take over the dominance position. These two processing models interact with each other during the whole classification procedure.