The aim of this chapter is to introduce and discuss aesthetics as an approach to understand how design frames experience. In doing so, the chapter combines two philosophical interests in design, design phenomenology and design aesthetics, in order to promote a framework for discussing the impact of aesthetic meaning construction on experience. First, the chapter raises the phenomenological conditions experience. Second, in looking at aesthetics in terms of (a) the sensual appeal of design, (b) design objects as aesthetic media that frame modes of understandemployed to di erentiate between three di erent ways in which design frame our experience: We can look at sensual, conceptual, and contextual aesthetic dimensions of design and examine their contribution to the framing of experience, that is, how di erent dimensions of meaning articulation in design o er di erent framings of the experiences promoted by design objects and solutions. Further, the concept of aestheticization is introduced and discussed as the way in which objects are construed as 'aesthetic'. A central insight is that the contextual aspect of aestheticization can promote a cultural construction of new conditions and new categories for the way we experience relevant meaning properties of design objects.

Conceptualizing Aesthetics in Design: A Phenomenological Framework

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