Product as A Symbol: Reading its Cypher Script
Keywords:
Product conceptualization, Product Levels, Cypher, PhenomenologyAbstract
As products are created to cater to multiple needs of consumers simultaneously their appeal extend far beyond forms and corresponding functions and include creating experiences that are dynamic in nature and are relevant to consumers’ ever evolving needs. To enable products to perform such wide and varied functions, they are developed as abstract symbols and are placed in the gap that exist between subject and object. As an intermediate entity, it draws traits from both subject and object and in the process loses its objectness to become a cypher and its opaqueness is laid bare, empirical reality is unveiled and its meaning disclosed.
This paper analyses product in its phenomenological form to ascertain its symbolic reality. It peels the philosophical layers that reside within the product concept and isolates a three-levelled construction of product as a theoretical construct. The three levels isolated are form-function relationships that produce meaning, techno-subjective abstraction that produces form and ontological structure of experience that produces experience. This model unravels structures within a product as seen from the perspective of the manufacturer and the consumer.
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