FONDECYT

Experiential characterization from the Emotional Design methods

The native woods of Chile as a material for Design.

The Initiative

AWARD-WINNER PROJECT OF CHILEDISEÑO 2025 PRIZE, ACADEMIC RESEARCH CATEGORY

This initiative corresponds to the FONDECYT initiation project n°11190132 (2019 – 2023), funded by the National Agency for Research and Development ANID and focused on establishing the qualities linked to the perception and emotions of fifteen native woods of Chile.

If you would like to contact us, the “contact” section will be permanently enabled after the project closes. We recommend viewing the site on laptops or desktop PCs to take advantage of all its features.

Theory

In the material selection processes conducted by designers in each new project, the technical or engineering properties determine the functional aspects and play an important role, but the key aspects that contribute to defining user preferences for one product or space or another are the experiential qualities of the materials, which can be objectively defined based on people’s perception.

Methodology

To determine these experiential qualities, a rigorous characterization experience was designed and conducted with more than 300 people throughout Chile, which aimed to define aspects related to the sensory, affective, meanings and potential applicability of 15 native woods to different products and spaces. To achieve this, people interacted with physical samples of each species and answered a survey while their reactions were captured biometrically using specialized software.

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Catalog

This section is the core of the website and brings the final outcomes of the study to the attention of all interested parties. Here are presented the technical sheets that report the experiential characterization of fifteen native Chilean species (plus Radiata pine as a comparison species, as it is the most widely used in Chile). The data sheets present the results of sensory perception, the emotions linked to each wood, the biometric analysis, as well as the meanings, possible uses and processes, and the associations that people gave them. Different filters are included to help the search and to establish associations and relationships between the species.

Comparisons

In this section it is possible to compare the sensory, affective or meaning aspects of two or more species with each other, contrasting the associations that people gave them, by means of various graphs. This functionality allows for an in-depth understanding of the differences and similarities between the qualities associated with each species and the relationships of convergence or divergence that exist between the various levels of material experience, both within the same species and between the different species evaluated.