Affective Design
There has been a long tradition of a series of researches on aesthetic and attractive design, particularly in Europe. Those designs, including not only ones aesthetically beautiful, but also those to give a sense of wonder, sensual or vibrant ones, and those make their owners proud of them, may give a variation of affective experiences to people who own or see them. People irresistibly pay much money accidentally for these excellent designs, or become tolerant even if they have poor usability.
Such affective designs are not limited only within the category of fine arts, but also seen in everyday things such as kitchen ware and stationary. What are essences of such affective designs? For a long time, they have been considered as the territory of arts, or based on quite personal attributes of product designers such as their own sensitivity, skills or talents. However, now that the boundary between aesthetic design and engineering design is blurred, there are emerging researches to systematically investigate the fundamental elements of those fine arts.
source: Umemuro, H. (2009). Affective technology, affective management, towards affective society. Proceedings of The 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2009).