Innovation Pathways in Cultural and Creative Product Design:An Emotional Design Perspective Based on the Palace Museum

Abstract

In the context of global cultural consumption upgrading and the rise of the emotional economy, traditional museum cultural and creative products face growing challenges in engaging contemporary audiences. Current academic research predominantly emphasizes the visual translation of cultural symbols, yet remains insufficiently attentive to users’deeper emotional engagement and affective connections. To address this issue, a strategic shift toward "emotional empowerment" has become essential. This study draws upon Donald Norman’s three-level theory of emotional design and adopts the Palace Museum’s cultural and creative products as a representative case study. It investigates how strategic design interventions facilitate users’ emotional progression—from initial sensory experience to sustained cultural identification. The study proposes an integrated emotional design framework structured across three interrelated levels: instinctive, behavioral, and reflective. At the instinctive level, visual appeal is enhanced through contemporary reinterpretation of traditional motifs; at the behavioral level, usability and interactive engagement are strengthened to support functional satisfaction; and at the reflective level, cultural metaphors and narrative depth are leveraged to cultivate users’ sense of belonging and cultural resonance. Collectively, this framework establishes a coherent, sequential pathway：“visual attraction—deepened experiential engagement—spiritual resonance”，thereby offering systematic, theory-informed design guidance for museum cultural products to evolve from object-centered storytelling toward meaningful, emotionally grounded user connections.