The Study of Cultural Differences in Consumers’ Visual Perception of Parametric Shape Arrangement Products Between East and West: Applying to Consumer Electronics as Example

In recent years, the globalization of product design has developed rapidly. When a product is sold and displayed in the market, people with different cultural backgrounds may have different views and feelings about the product. In this era of focusing on consumer feelings, cross-cultural cognitive differences must be considered in product design. However, the past literature shows two different self-construction models between East and West, and self-construction will affect a person's cognition, emotion, and motivation. Therefore, the common “shape” elements in product design have different cognitive differences between East and West consumers. Thus, through three experiments, this study compares cross-cultural visual perceptions of product designs with “shape” elements by consumers with different cultural self-construction. (1) The first experiment explores the differences in aesthetic preferences of cross-cultural self-construction for geometric arrangement samples. Through the sample design of round and angular arrangement, the differences in aesthetic preferences of self-construction of different cultures are investigated; (2) The second experiment is a study on the design dimension of consumers’ arrangement of product surface shapes, which mainly explores consumers’ definition of design dimensions for product surface shape arrangement, including the relationship between aesthetic, functional, and symbolic design characteristics; (3) The third stage is the discussion of consumers' physiological visual perception, using eye trackers to explore consumers' visual perception of shape-arranged products. These studies provide a prospective insight into cross-cultural product design and deliver a reference for designers to apply the “shape” element in products.