Product aesthetics: representing designer intent and consumer response

This thesis reports on the development of a conceptual framework for product aesthetics. By adopting the theoretical perspective that products are a medium of communication between designers and consumers, the nature of consumer response and designer intent is explored. By integrating a range of disparate literature within a single coherent framework, the varieties of consumer response to product visual form are illustrated. To investigate the ways in which designers intend to evoke these responses, a qualitative research study was undertaken. This primarily involved interviews with industrial designers and consumer investigators. Analysis of these interviews led to the development of a conceptual framework for designer intent which both mirrors, and integrates with, that produced for consumer response. By representing processes beyond design that are influential in determining product form, a broader contextual framework is presented within which product aesthetics is situated. In concluding the thesis, applications for this framework are discussed and future research directions are proposed.

Earthquakes, influenza and cycles of Indian kala-azar.

It is suggested that previous data indicate 3 major epidemics of kala-azar in Assam between 1875 and 1950, with inter-epidemic periods of 30-45 and 20 years. This deviates from the popular view of regular cycles with a 10-20 year period. A deterministic mathematical model of kala-azar is used to find the simplest explanation for the timing of the 3 epidemics, paying particular attention to the role of extrinsic (drugs, natural disasters, other infectious diseases) versus intrinsic (host and vector dynamics, birth and death rates, immunity) processes in provoking the second. We conclude that, whilst widespread influenza in 1918-1919 may have magnified the second epidemic, intrinsic population processes provide the simplest explanation for its timing and synchrony throughout Assam. The model also shows that the second inter-epidemic period is expected to be shorter than the first, even in the absence of extrinsic agents, and highlights the importance of a small fraction of patients becoming chronically infectious (with post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis) after treatment during an epidemic.