Keywords

1 The Cultural Emotion Connotation of Museum Cultural Creative Products

1.1 Status Quo of Museum Cultural Creative Products in China

Museum cultural creative products, including tangible products and intangible products, refer to those products that are creatively designed and developed based on the museum collections. Tangible products are those museum souvenirs and derivative products, which are designed and developed according to museum collections with typical museum style, while intangible products mean those cultural activities and events held by various museums [1]. Hereby in this essay, the main research object is the tangible museum cultural creative products.

Since 1980s, museum stores have been gradually built up in the western world. These stores have expanded the space of the consumption of museum service as well as broaden the space of the communication of museum culture. The curtain of developing museum cultural creative products rose in May 2016, when a notification named “Some opinions on promoting the development of cultural and creative products of cultural relics units” was issued by several government departments, including National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China, and State Administration of Cultural Heritage etc. The development and popularization of Mobile Internet technology have promoted the marketization of museum cultural creative products and thus the consumption of museum cultural creative products becomes a fashionable culture consumption. In such a circumstance, Social media and E-commerce platform become the major path of purchasing museum cultural creative products. For instance, in T-Mall (a famous online shopping platform belonging to Alibaba), there are two cultural creative product shops with different market positioning, which both belonging to Beijing Palace Museum. They have altogether over five hundred kinds of products and nearly 40,000,000 followers in total. It is obvious that museum cultural creative products in China owns a huge potential market, which is drawing international attention more and more. In 1st, July, 2018, the first flagship store of British Museum opened up in T-Mall, selling museum cultural creative products, and only within one month, the followers are up to 1,600,000, most items sold out soon.

1.2 Relationship Between the Cultural Emotion and the Design of Museum Cultural Creative Products

For a city, museum bears an important responsibility on producing and recreating culture. Museum, via space design, becomes a culture place to meet people’s visual needs, providing a public space for interpersonal communication and dialogue, through which people’s sense of identity will be strengthened. As products of museum, an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of objects with artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance and the cultural diffusion and generation, the museum cultural creative product is not only a vital element carrying historical culture, but also an indispensable component of museum. Culture’s semiotically has hence become the primary property of the museum cultural creative products, quite different from other usual industrial products, in their design process, in which the designers need to make full use of various creative elements to construct a significance space that is able to reappear and reconstruct history culture.

Fundamentally, the designing of museum cultural creative products is a designing of a substantial culture designing [2], which means that it is the fruit of combining cultural tradition and innovative design. So far, many researchers have explored and studied the cultural significance and the application of cultural elements, for example: to enhance the quality of product design of museum cultural creative products by excavating digital heritage [3]; exploration on the model of consumers’ regional cultural image and designing method of product [4]; to establish a design-semiotics-based recreating process, techniques and methods of cultural elements [5]. All these researches have offered inspirations for this research. “Emotion” serving as a point of penetration, this essay mainly explores the designing philosophy and creative application of museum cultural creative products. The philosophical essence of “emotion” is human’s subjective reflection of objective things’ value-relationship and value-characteristics [6]. Meanwhile, emotion is a kind of social phenomenon closely related to the unique social culture. It is shaped by the social culture and in turn exerts influence on social culture and its progress [7]. All in all, the perception and inheritance of culture is a process of emotion’ s flow and diffusion.

2 The Worth of Emotion-Retrospection-Based Experience Mode in Product Design for Museum Cultural Creative Products

2.1 Experience Mode of Emotion Retrospection

In the era of Experience Economy, service product providers supply consumers with memorable experiences, considering service as the core and using products as materials. Consumers’ behavior thus becomes an activity that pursues sensibility and scene moulding and so the interaction between consumers, and products is playing an essential role in this process. This Emotion retrospection experience mode rightly roots in such a big-time background. In detail, this mode hails from the concept of “Emotion retrospection”. Here “Emotion” can be understood as a reflection of experiences in brain. The essence of such experience is feelings and emotional memories caused by people, things or events appearing in daily life [8]. “Emotion retrospection” experience mode intends to construct consumers’ familiar cognitive scenes and projective scenes, and to seek consumers’ emotional triggering point or pain spot in the process of product design, and the purpose is to ultimately build up a emotional link between consumer and product. Product design and consumers’ emotion have mutual effects on each other, which is to say their emotion will affect their comprehension over the cultural connotation conveyed by cultural creative products and various design elements will simultaneously bring about feelings fluctuation and emotion varieties to the users.

2.2 The Worth of Emotion-Retrospection-Based Experience Mode in Product Design for Museum Cultural Creative Products

Museum is a special space that is able to reappear and reconstruct cultural significance and to visit a museum is a personal experience. Since consumption of the museum cultural creative products is a crucial part of it, “Emotion retrospection” experience mode shows its momentous sense and worth in product design for museum cultural creative products. “Emotion retrospection” experience mode owns great significance and mechanism. In terms of product itself, its cultural semitropical function can be better fulfilled if the philosophy of “Emotion retrospection” can be applied in designing museum cultural creative products, because the museum cultural creative products should not only meet the needs of contemporary individuals, but also take the function of directing the public aesthetic and civic literacy into consideration. No matter in which form the cultural creative product is, its spirit always relates to the city that the museum represents and its life is endowed by the historical and cultural charm of the city and the knowledge information together with the artistic appeals of the collections in that museum. In terms of consumption, the perceived value of consumers can be better realized if the philosophy of “Emotion retrospection” can be applied in designing museum cultural creative products. Here, “perceived value”, commonly including function value, emotion value and price value, refers to consumers’ overall evaluation, on product utility according to their own deliberation about products advantages and disadvantages. As mentioned previously, the perception and inheritance of culture is a process of emotion’s flow and diffusion and according to Meini Guo (2018), there is a positive correlation between consumers’ perception of the cultural connotation in cultural creative products and their satisfaction about products. Consumers sentiment trend and attitude towards the products significantly influence their perception on products’ cultural connotation. So, in the process of developing museum cultural creative products, designers can try to waken and activate consumers’ emotional memories, so as to reinforce consumers’ perception of the cultural connotation in cultural creative products, which will lead to their purchase intention and increase their satisfaction.

3 The Application of Emotion-Retrospection-Based Experience Mode in Product Design for Museum Cultural Creative Products

The process of Cultural creative products’ loading and storing culture includes two periods: in the first period, consumers merely have a superficial perception of the products; in the second period, consumers may have a deeper recognition and understanding of the product’s inner mechanism. These two periods are namely “modal level” and “intensional level”. “Modal level” refers to the form and appearance of the product, which can present the cultural elements and be directly perceived, such as typical historic figures, scenery, architectures and so on. “Intensional level” means those various cultural connotation and value orientation contained within the product, which are not tangible but need consumers to sense, experience and comprehend [9]. In terms of consumers, their learning about and then purchasing the museum cultural creative products is actually a process of feelings transition: from perception to acceptance. They obtain the information about products in “modal level”, while they gain resonance in “intensional level” by experiencing and comprehending the cultural connotation and value orientation inside products. When the philosophy of emotion retrospection is introduced into product design of the museum cultural creative products, the culture is likely to be better conveyed and spread in both periods (modal level and intensional level), so as to enhance consumers’ satisfaction of experience, boost consumption decisions and fulfill the conveyance and direction of cultural meaning and value. There are three different application modes in product design of the museum cultural creative products:

3.1 Scene Principle: To Arouse the Existing Emotion Experience

“Scene” is originally a terminology of film ology, and when used in design, it means the description about interactive behaviors between people and environment or system. Many scenes possess emotional triggering point, which is a key factor to help expand the cultural connotation of a product from modal level to intensional level. Therefore, before developing new museum cultural creative products, the designer needs to firstly identify an item that carries the target cultural connotation and then redesign it with a proper emotional triggering point that can arouse the existing emotion experience of consumers.

The “Wen-ZhengMing Chinese wisteria seeds gift box” (see Fig. 1), a cultural creative product from Suzhou Museum, is a case that has successfully applied “scene principle” to provide consumers an emotion-retrospection-based Experience. The inspiration of such a brilliant product comes from a 480-year-old ancient Chinese wisteria (see Fig. 2), which was planted by a painting master ZhengMing Wen himself, a Suzhou local, in the Palace of Prince Zhong located in Suzhou Museum, in Ming Dynasty. From 2013 on, there will be 3000 seeds selected out of 5000 after the florescence of that Chinese wisteria every year. These carefully selected seeds are packed into small delicate boxes, 3 in each, and then sold as limited edition gift box. Once rolled out, the “Wen-ZhengMing Chinese wisteria seeds gift box” have gained a lot of peculiarities among consumers. Its limited edition makes it even not easy to get one. The reason of this success is that the cultural connotation of this product has aroused consumers’ emotional memories about the famous ancient city Suzhou. The Chinese wisteria is a symbol of Suzhou’s cultural heritage, as well as a representation of a connotation with dignified sense of culture passed from one generation to the next. When consumers plant these Chinese wisteria seeds on their own, observing the seed sprouting and coming in leaf, they will experience what their ancestors experienced.

Fig. 1.
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Wen-ZhengMing Chinese wisteria seeds gift box

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Fig. 2.
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Wisteria

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3.2 Exploration Principle: To Establish a Brand New Experience Based on Intrinsical Emotion Experience

Museum cultural creative products are mainly based on a series of collections of a certain museum, and under such a premise, other derivative products with various functions and meanings are developed. Let’s take the Rosetta Stone of British Museum as an instance. In the official store of British Museum, there are 55 kinds of products based on it, including mouse pads, USB flash disks and mugs. However, what must be paid attention is that nowadays most design of museum cultural creative products are mugs, key rings and other types of accessories, leading to a convergence in the categories of museum cultural creative products. In order to design distinguished products, designers need to think about new patterns and forms of the museum cultural creative products, which are yet familiar to consumers and able to arouse their old experience and emotional memories. Designed in this way, the products may drive consumers to explore new reception based on intrinsical emotion experience and finally bring them a brand new experience.

The most faddish museum cultural creative products “Food Weapon–sword-shaped ice-cube maker” (see Fig. 3) of Taipei Palace Museum is an excellent example of emotion-retrospection-based product designed with exploration principle. Ice-lolly mould will recall many people’s memories about their golden childhood. In those good old days, when material life was not so abundant as it is today, to DIY some cold drinks or ice-lollies must be one of the happiest things in summer and for children, to fight like a sword knight a millennium ago is always what they longed to. Therefore, nowadays when people use these sword-shaped ice-cube makers to repeat what they loved to do when they were young, such objects looking like Yue Goujian Sword, Qi Zi Sword or Wu Shou Sword and with strong sense of history and tableaux may, again, trigger their yearning for Robinhood-style life. What an impressive scene: in broiling summer, one pulls out an “ice sword” from the sword-shaped ice mould, just as the dream of childhood comes true. It is the sword-shaped ice-cube maker, this special product, that fulfills the “emotion retrospection” about their childhood for consumers, enabling them to retrospect that happiest memory of summer.

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Food Weapon–sword-shaped ice-cube maker

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3.3 Prototype Principle: To Utilize Symbolic Significance to Conduct Emotion Retrospection

“Prototype” here refers to “collective unconscious”, a psychological terminology, which means a combination of the basic ideas and images that all people are believed to share because they have inherited them. Due to the existence prototype, human’s emotions and behavioral patterns have regional universality and ethnic universality, so that people can react similarly in some psychological processes such as perceiving, comprehending and imaging etc. One of the key characteristics of museum cultural creative product is its strong symbolism. Because of the symbolic meaning in the same traditional culture, people will associate specific words, characters, letters, names or images with corresponding meanings. For example, in China, people will think of best wishes when seeing the word “Fu Lu Shou (福禄寿)”, or have a sense of calmness and noble and unsullied characters when seeing the images of pine trees, bamboos and plum blossom. People’s emotional imagery is affected by percipience and consciousness, and that is to say when people are observing a category of object, the relevant images will reappear in their brains and relevant emotional comprehension will be activated. So, if the concept of “prototype” is applied in designing museum cultural creative products, the design ideas can be both improved an enriched vastly. Furthermore, the emotional functions and practical functions will be better accomplished.

“3D Deer Night Lamp” (see Fig. 4) of Chinese National Museum is a delicate example of emotion-retrospection-based product designed with prototype principle. The lamp is equipped with a tapping switch and a USB interface. The configuration of it is derived from eight Chinese cultural relics, full of semioticalness and symbolic meaning. Its appearance looks like a procumbent little deer, 9.8 cm high, stemming from the famous “Deer-shaped bronze paperweight decorated by shells”, which was excavated in Hou Chuan Han Dynasty Tombs in Xia Xian, Henan Province, in 1957. On deer’s back is a grand cowrie shells as a decoration, which makes the lamp beautiful as well as practical. In Chinese, a procumbent deer has the same pronunciation with “Fu Lu(福禄) ”, meaning happiness and fortune, and the shell is a symbol of treasures and all these will bring the users of this lamp a wonderful feeling.

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3D Deer Night Lamp

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4 Expectation of the Philosophy of Emotion Retrospection Applied in Development of Product Design for Museum Cultural Creative Products in the Future

As the Internet and the Internet of Things rapidly develop, the society gradually enters the era of interconnected intelligence with the background of big data and artificial intelligence. Development of technologies have induced the change of thought. In the fields of design, the philosophy has evolved from the conventional design of agrarian age and the modern design of industry time into the creative design, which is suitable to the current knowledge network time [10]. Nowadays, experience-based museum cultural creative products tend to become the mainstream products in the coming years because of the technique innovation and increasing demands in cultural consumption. Therefore, the emotion-retrospection-based experience mode will be bound to present a new look in the near future.

4.1 User-Involvement-Based Design

In the era of intelligence, as users’ statuses are getting higher and higher, users’ engagement and the establishment of users’ community becomes a kernel part in product design. At the same time, besides the needs of product function, users will focus more on their aesthetic needs and value orientation conveyed the products they plan to purchase. “Emotion retrospection” experience mode is based on the interaction of users and products, and as a result, the degree of users’ involvement and their acceptance of products will greatly affect their using experience. At the moment, society-wide media marketing is the major marketing approach and social media such as Weibo and WeChat Official Account of museums have become the front battlefields of product promotion. Some museums have tried to take users’ suggestions, implementing their ideas in designing the museum cultural creative products, and gains amazing success. A famous example is that Beijing Palace Museum once rolled out “Cold Palace” and “Royal Kitchen” fridge magnets, which was originally proposed its fans, and with the products, there laid introduction cards telling people the secrets of the royal palace. The moment this series of fridge magnet was released, it has got onto the Weibo’s Top Hot Topics and soon becomes a most-sought product. Allowing users to participate in product designing may cultivate their autonomy and motivation, building an innate emotional link between products and users, so that when they use the products, they will obtain more emotional resonance. In addition, “User-involvement-based design” assists consumers with different consumption demands to form a unified cognition about the products, which may provide them common topics on values, triggering points and demands about the products, and consequently consumers’ behaviors will bring new inspiration to product development and more energy to spread product’s reputation.

4.2 Expansion of Products’ Connection Properties

The greatest highlight of product design in the era of intelligence is to develop and realize product’s connection-property, the function of which will highly expand the range and possibility of products application and enhance the interaction between users and products. Currently, the functions and usages of the museum cultural creative products are still so limited that they are usually used in the fields of crafts and home decoration. But in the long future, once the technologies such as AI, VR or AR can better meet consumers’ emotional needs, for example: the chronologies can supply people with more refined scenery details and underlying psychological experience, consumers will be likely to have more imaginary and cognitive spaces for their emotional memories. Moreover, as the product optimizing become more and more consummate, the boundary to limit product’s application range will gradually vanish, and finally the cultural connotation of the museum cultural creative products can be better conveyed.

5 Ending

Museum is a spiritual homeland of human culture, and emergence of the museum cultural creative products have significantly widen the paths and approaches to promoting the culture of museums. The museum cultural creative products with the philosophy of “emotion retrospection” can better fulfill the inheritance and promotion of the cultural connotation and also enable the user to deeply sense the practical functions of the products. The application of “emotion retrospection” in the design of museum cultural creative products brings about a whole new orientation to carry forward Chinese traditional and can be consider as an exploration and a trial on Chinese-style design.