Shaping Emotions: a Study about the Feeling of Loneliness through the Material Interaction with Surfaces

This contribution aims to investigate how design culture can foster new models of emotional, social and cultural interaction that find in the pleasantness of the surface the creation of valuable experiences for users. In particular, the research examines interaction design from a different point of view, studying the relation of emotions and surfaces in a product-based interaction experience. Specifically, the contribution presents the results of a workshop called shaping emotions: a formal exercise based on the understanding of how user sensations - without precise references on a particular product - can play a decisive role in defining strategies that embrace the aesthetic and typological sphere of use and meanings. This study has highlighted the transfer of intangible psycho-cognitive aspects into tangible elements whose syntax and semiotics is driven by a phenomenological approach to the formal interpretation of an emotional concept. Emotions that occur from experiential states place the feelings of the human being as a focus of the project; through the design culture, the study tries to interpret experiences and desires as components of mixed emotions.