Aesthetic experience & innovation culture : the aesthetic experience in an R&D department through design and for innovation culture

• Main Author: Ocnarescu, Ioana Cristina
• Language: English
• Published: Ecole nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers - ENSAM 2013
• Subjects: [SPI:OTHER] Engineering Sciences/Other; [SPI:OTHER] Sciences de l'ingénieur/Autre; User Experience; Aesthetic Experience; Innovation culture; Design culture
• Online Access: http://pastel.archives-ouvertes.fr/pastel-01016795; http://pastel.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/01/01/67/95/PDF/OCNARESCU.pdf

This thesis, conducted at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France under the supervision of LCPI Laboratory and Strate Collège, explores the concept of aesthetic experiences in an R&D department.One of the current interests of design research explores the concept of User eXperience (UX) and provides frameworks and methods to observe, describe and generate a rich product experience. Other recent studies focus on the aesthetic experience in organizations. Using an Action-Research approach, we extend the knowledge on aesthetic experiences through a new perspective: rather than looking at the users' experience, we framework the experience of multidisciplinary R&D teams through a qualitative and quantitative study. Our experimentation field consists of multidisciplinary projects from the Applications Research Domain (APPRD) - the multidisciplinary department of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. We study the most memorable projects - those that trigger aesthetic experiences in the work experience of research-engineers. Our goal is to understand what is the link between aesthetic experience feelings, design practices and aspects of the innovation culture. Finally, we propose a descriptive framework of aesthetic experience in this context and we show first implications to trigger this type of experience in a multidisciplinary R&D department.