Stakeholder’ perception of product messages

Designers create messages that are encoded in the products’ design and consumers perceive the products in an environment. Hence the product can be seen as a communication media between the designer and different product stakeholders. The stakeholder’s response to the designer’s intent embodied in the product design falls into three categories: cognitive, affective and behavioural. In some cases, it is important to have an understanding of stakeholder response to product design. This paper presents theories, approaches and methods for the understanding of stakeholder response to designer intent embodied in product design and discusses them in relation to the extent to which they are usable in a design project. The possible use and appropriateness of the theories and methods are exemplified by the authors’ ongoing research projects. Since the perception of a product form is subjective, there can be differences between designers’ and stakeholders’ responses to product design. Therefore, in some cases, it is important to make designer intent and stakeholder response explicit and to analyse the discrepancies. Using different approaches and methods to understand stakeholder response can be used to improve a product design and for guiding the stakeholders’ choices of products to purchase