Abstract
A customer's emotional responses to products are influenced by cognitive processes, such as their memories of the experience of using the product and their expectations of the product's performance. We propose a cognitive, neural model (the PEAM model) of Expectology, as a framework to provide designers with a novel methodology for designing products that takes into consideration the emotional responses of customers. The model divides the cognitive processes of product use into four phases: a prediction phase, experience phase, appraisal phase, and a memory phase. The present paper examined the spatiotemporal changes of brain activities associated with appraisal and memory of products, using electroencephalogram (EEG). Ten healthy participants with normal or corrected-to-normal vision were measured EEG while viewing images of product followed by a preference rating. Our results revealed significantly more gamma frequency band neural activation in the prefrontal and temporal areas for products which were rated preferable. These findings suggest that the activities in these specific brain areas are a highly reliable predictor for appraisal of products.
