Designing a Precious Key : A First-Person Creation, Exploration and evaluation-process

Abstract: The purpose of this project is to explore aspects of a design that makes an electronic key feel precious toa user. The goal is to find information that is useful when designing electronic keys and to serve as partof the research in the project Precious Keys. Several prototypes and designs were created and evaluated,each over a period of several weeks. The designs each had different prominent aspects that were theorisedto carry preciousness and these aspects were analysed during the evaluation process. The designs werethen compared and iteratively improved upon in order to explore each aspect properly. The result showedthat function, visual appeal, fiddle-friendliness, history with the key and friction had the most impact onperceived preciousness. Creating the key with your own hands proved to be the most effective way tocreate preciousness through history. The aspects “unity” and “augmentation” were also discussed butcould not be proven to have an impact on perceived preciousness. In line with presented theories, thisstudy shows clear relations between aspects of design that have a positive impact on the perceivedpreciousness and electronic keys. It is even possible to grade these in terms of most impact to least impact.The study also has shown that first-person research is arguably a good method to research the topic.