Designing Product to Improve Affective Communication

Human being has been involved in a new information environment combining with embedded computing product and network. This combination is changing the relationships not only between human and product but also person to person. Information communication is required to be an important facet in product innovation. It is considered that the physical, cognitive and affective are the three levels of information communication. While the physical and cognitive levels of information design have been greatly improved in the last decade, it is important to rethink how affective design can improve interactions between human and products or interpersonal relationships. The paper discusses the evolution in information communications from three levels of the physical, cognitive and affective, and proposes design strategies approaching the affective design in product innovation.