SENSE TRAINING AS BASIS FOR AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
Year: 2016
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Christian Tollestrup, Kaare Eriksen, Nis Ovesen
Author: Dahl Thomsen, Bente
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark
Section: Form and Aesthetics in Collaborative Design
Page(s): 328-333
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9
Abstract
Many systematic and schematic assessments reveal that they are based on vague concepts about the
aesthetic, if the theme at all has managed to make a parametrisation of the ‘reason of meaning’. That is
fundamental for realisation of the sensuous experiences design engineers aim to offer their users. It is
a special problem for design engineers, who must guarantee the aesthetic, ethical and utilitarian
qualities of products in a product development process. It does not matter whether they or other
designers have conceived the product idea. It has been found that sense training can open up to
aesthetic experiences, and thereby provide a platform for connecting sensory experiences with that
which triggered them. The understanding of these connections gives a starting point for a
parameterisation of the aesthetic. The articulation of the basis of experiences rests on criteria known
from the aesthetic subjects. Group discussions in connection with establishing assessment matrices can
also contributes to a clarifying of demands for the aesthetic qualities of product. This study examine
the appropriateness of a series of exercises for supporting design engineers students in developing
their aesthetic experience and train their specification of the basis for aesthetic experiences. The
context for the study is a course and a project in interaction design about designing rehabilitation
products, where undergraduate students must develop a project program with focus on theoretical
scientific research and experiment, and they must involve user and experts with experience from
practice.
Keywords: Sense training, Baumgarten's aesthetics, aesthetic experiences, objective properties.