Master's Thesis: Proposal for the inclusion of Emotional Design in the training process of the Cuban industrial designer.

Abstract

The solidity that design has achieved as a profession and the incorporation of knowledge from its interaction with other disciplines, provide it with the necessary tools to provide solutions more adjusted to the problems of the context and put in the hands of users products that, in addition to meet functional and usability needs, provide emotional benefits to the consumer.
One of the current trends in the field of design is to focus attention on people and their emotions. Many authors maintain that an adequate design makes the difference in products and services; so it is about the user living such a pleasant emotional experience that they want to repeat it.
For some years now, designers and organizations have been using the affective aspects of products as a form of differentiation and it is the set of methods and techniques that have their application in this field that is known as "emotional or affective design."
Around this topic many authors such as: Pieter Desmet, Donald Norman, Rubén H. Jacob Dazarola, Patrick W. Jordan and Professor Mitsuo Nagamachi, have made important theoretical contributions.
The incorporation of emotional design into the design process of a product is intended to meet the user's expectations and exceed their basic requirements in terms of quality and functionality.
This is why many universities and institutes linked to design and architecture include emotional design and also other trends related to it, such as experience design, in the training process of their professionals.
For the training of designers at the higher level, Cuba exclusively relies on the Higher Institute of Design (ISDi). In it, the careers of: Visual Communication Design and Industrial Design are studied. Both have a study plan that includes basic subjects in the training of all professionals and 6 more specific ones that correspond to the design activity; with the common objective of training integral designers who maintain an innovative stance in the face of the existing needs in the reality that surrounds them.
The Industrial Design career is structured from the Study Plan E and through this it is proposed to train and graduate designers of a broad profile adopting forms of education that, in correspondence with the dynamics of the design activity, allow them to combine theoretical, practical and project elements.
Since 1962, with the University Reform, the foundations were laid for the transformations that higher education in the country demanded in essence and one of the contributions of this Reform was the definition of the concept of continuous improvement of the study plans, with a view to satisfying the demands of the socioeconomic development of the country at all times and, also, to systematically assess the best of international trends that would be pertinent to adapt to the national context in the training of professionals (MES, 2016).
These facilities, together with the advantages provided by knowledge, mastery and incorporation of the set of knowledge that make up Emotional Design as a trend, make the development of this research timely. Although there are references that exercises have been developed in the Design subject whose objective has been to awaken emotions or reactions in users from their interaction with the products, in the Study Plan E for the Industrial Design career, there is no incorporated this content in a structured and conscious way.
Hence, the problem of this research arises from the need to introduce into the training of Cuban industrial designers the knowledge corresponding to this trend, taking advantage of the spaces that this study plan has created for the incorporation of knowledge that allows its updating.