Guidelines for Designing Stressful Emotion Relief Toys for Adults

Abstract

Nowadays, the rapid development of society not only fulfill people’s material needs and allow them to focus more on their spiritual needs, but also stress people out. Stressful emotion relief toys are noticed by more and more people. But designing a stressful emotion relief toy can be a huge challenge for designers since there are few research and study on this field. By studying the stress related theories, emotional design, development of adult toy and several case studies, this thesis will establish a way of designing a stressful emotion relief toy systematically and scientifically. In this study, stressful emotion relief toys will be categorized into four types based on Norman’s emotional design principles. Also common strategies and design patterns used in case studies will be summarized. As a result, by applying the strategies that designers like and following the design principles, designer will be successful to design a functional stressful emotion relief toy.