A study of cognitive human factors in mascot design

Abstract

Although understanding of the cognitive factors affecting subjects is critical in design, such objective methods to assist designers are rare. Mascots have been widely used for corporate identity and to arouse public attention. Despite their increasingly important usage, effective design is certainly a worthwhile topic. This paper presents a cognitive approach to study human factors affecting mascot design. Multidimensional scaling analysis is also performed to transform subjects' similarity judgment and preference rating score into geometric distance for a multidimensional configuration. The meanings associated with dimensions are then interpreted and discussed, along with subject preference and individual differences analyzed as well. Results presented herein provide designers with a valuable reference for designing a successful mascot. Relevance to industry The mascot has been widely used as a symbol for visual identity. Designers must know what the primary factors users need to recognize the mascot. Results in this study provide a direction for designers to concentrate their efforts on designing a good mascot for corporate identity.