An Academic Aesthetics?

Engineering Aesthetics and Ergo-Aesthetics:

Human factors researchers and practitioners have been focusing research attention on the easeof-use, productivity, safety, comfort, and effectiveness aspects of product and system design. This article argues that it is time that we add another important dimension to the fields of human factors research and practice—the aesthetic dimension. This article discusses the need for the establishment o...

Darwinian Aesthetics Informs Traditional Aesthetics

An Aesthetics of Nature Consequences of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied ontology

In his courses on Nature, the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty clearly does not agree with Kant's antropocentrism. In particular the Kantian notion of the disinterestedness of aesthetic perception is untenable in an aesthetics of nature which is inspired by Merleau-Ponty's thought. Nature and human embodiment are seen as separated in this Kantian tradition. In Merleau-Ponty’s pheno...

Towards an articulation of interaction aesthetics

Even though the emerging field of user experience generally acknowledges the importance of aesthetic qualities in interactive products and services, there is a lack of approaches recognizing the fundamentally temporal nature of interaction aesthetics. By means of interaction criticism, I introduce four concepts that begin to characterize the aesthetic qualities of interaction. Pliability refers...

“Curating” the JCP special issue on aesthetics in consumer psychology: An introduction to the aesthetics issue

This is the age of Aesthetics, Beauty, and Design. Newly available product innovations from the Apple i-phone to the latest Dyson vacuum reflect aesthetic values. Indeed, Apple's success has been attributed to the infusion of aesthetics into product design. This model of product creation has resulted in Apple becoming one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States. Acc...