A framework to design for meaning: insights on use, practicality and added value within a project-based learning context

Desired affordances and appropriate product semantics are important when considering products that are easy to use and easy to understand. Despite affordances and product semantics being taught in some design educations, many designers in industry do not explicitly consider affordances nor product semantics during the design process. This is partly due to the lack of a framework that supports the considerations for affordances and product semantics during the design process. As a consequence, many designers rely on their own intuition, and this can be problematic. To avoid the potential negative effects of relying on intuition, we designed a framework to support the designer in explicitly considering affordances and applying product semantics during product design. This framework was used by undergraduate students in product design engineering during a 12-week product design assignment. In this paper we present the framework, examples of how it was used and how it was evaluated by the students. We finally discuss the findings within the context of design for meaning and project-based learning.