42 people judged their emotional response to six typeface designs. There were 12 buttons to present the emotions visually (via animated characters). Participants viewed an alphabet responded by pressing each of the 12 buttons and selecting the strength of that emotion from 0 to 4. The data returned could be categorized as follows: participants--designers and non-designers, and males and females; emotions categorized by valence--6 positive and 6 negative; typeface stimuli categories--weight (bold or light), classification (serif or sans serif), character width (condensed or extended), and terminal style (square or round).
Here is what I hope to discover with my study:
First, I want to know whether people agree in their emotional assessment of the typefaces. [mean, median, mode, sd]
Second, I want to know if there are differences in the judgements of designers vs non-designers (maybe male/female).
Third, I would like to know if certain emotions are correlated with certain design features of the typefaces (and whether the larger categories of design features can be correlated with emotional valence or a with a pattern of discrete emotions).
Fourth--I CAN limit my study, but I sure don't want to! Perhaps different papers after my dissertation.
I would love to be able to develop a predictive design model: "If a designer wants to predictably stir happiness in their design, they should select a light weight serif typestyle."
Finally, this is my PhD study in Communication Design at the University of Minnesota. I appreciate your tutorials--they are just my speed.