Transgenerational communication through affective imagery in mood boards

Hedonomic design aims to make products not just easy to use, but pleasurable. Toward this goal, designers often use mood boards of abstract visual images to represent the aesthetic and affective response they would like their designs to evoke. We studied the effect of aging on viewers' ability to understand the meanings of abstract images selected by designers to express specific affective concepts. Young adult and older adult participants made visual judgment on the affective images. Data showed no age-related differences in the judgment accuracy. Results suggest that elderly adults can extract emotional meanings from young designers' mood boards as well as do young adults, and that affective product semantics may communicate similar meanings to users of different age group.