Impact of product design representation on customer judgment with associated eye gaze patterns

Researchers often use simplified product form representations, such as silhouettes, sketches, and other two dimensional representations of products, to examine customer preferences. While these simplified representations make the analysis procedure tractable, for example linking certain design manipulations to certain preferences, the reality is that people evaluate more sophisticated product representations during purchase decisions. This paper presents the results of a study where two groups of people were shown either computer sketches and front/side view (FSV) silhouettes or simplified renderings and realistic renderings of cars and coffee carafes. Human judgments measured included opinions, objective evaluations, and inferences. Results show a variety of phenomena including preference inconsistences and ordering effects. Data collected from an eye-tracker help to elucidate these findings.