EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSUMERS’ EMOTIONAL PERCEPTION AND PRODUCT FORMS: A CASE STUDY ON CAR DESIGN

Nowadays, there is a need to analyze the relationship between emotions, consumers and product design need. Hence, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between Malaysian consumers’ emotional or feeling preference, or so-called Kansei perception, on product form of car design via survey. A semantic differential method is employed to measure the subjective response of emotional perception. An independent t-test and factor analysis are carried out to analyze the  consumers’ perception. The consumers’ semantic differential is gathered from a total of 112 subjects, comprising of 56 males and 56 females, whereby the subjects evaluate 12 car designs using 16 Kansei adjective pairs. The results reveal that there no significant differences in perception distribution between males and females for all Kansei impressions. From the factor analysis, it is found that the Kansei impressions on car design can be grouped into three factors which significantly influence the consumers’ emotional perception

Proposta de aprendizagem da metodologia Kansei Engineering no curso de Design de produto

Orientadora: Profª Viviane Gaspar Ribas El MarghaniDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Parana, Setor de Artes, Comunicação e Design, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação. Defesa: Curitiba, 28/02/2014Inclui referênciasÁrea de concentração : Design gráfico e de produtoResumo: A metodologia Kansei Engineering (KE) foi desenvolvida como uma tecnologia orientada para o consumidor com a finalidade de aprimorar o desenvolvimento de novos produtos. É definida como "tecnologia que traduz os sentimentos do consumidor e a imagem de um produto em elementos de design". Essa metodologia, baseada principalmente em conceitos matemáticos, tem permeado as indústrias japonesas e é utilizada em indústrias automotivas, de eletrodomésticos, construção civil, e vestuário e tem se mostrado eficiente para o projeto, manipulando dados subjetivos de maneira quantitativa. No Brasil, muitas faculdades de design incluem em sua grade curricular o ensino de metodologias empíricas, principalmente por ser uma área voltada para humanas. Entretanto, é importante considerar que metodologias como o KE podem ampliar as taxas de retorno de um projeto de produto e minimizar os riscos de um produto "ruim" chegar ao consumidor. Nesse estudo realizou-se, através de pesquisas sobre a literatura disponível e com o auxílio de revisão bibliográfica sistemática, um levantamento de estudos KE. O objetivo, com o levantamento e análise de casos, é elaborar uma proposta de aprendizagem KE, permitindo que essa metodologia seja disseminada nas universidades. Como principal resultado o trabalho apresenta uma proposta de aprendizagem estruturada com um plano de aula passo a passo, oferecendo um material pronto para replicação. Além disso, o estudo apresenta um experimento que retrata a aplicação dessa proposta em um grupo de estudantes de design de produto do terceiro ano, o andamento e resultados obtidos. Desse modo foi possível propor um modelo e também testar sua eficácia. Palavras Chave: tecnologia orientada ao consumidor. design de produto. sentimento kansei. engenharia kansei. metodologia Kansei. gestão do designAbstract: The Kansei Engineering (KE) methodology was developed as an oriented technology for the costumer with the purpose of improve new products development. It is defined as "technology that represents the costumer feeling in images of a product design elements." This methodology, based mainly on mathematical concepts have permeated Japanese industries and is widely used in automotive industry, home appliances, construction, and clothing industry and has shown an efficient method to manipulate subjective data in a quantitative way. At Brazil, many design colleges do not include in curriculum the teaching of quantitative methodology, mainly because it is an area focused on human. However, it is important to consider that methodologies such as KE can increase as income from a product design and minimize the risk of a "bad" product reaches the consumer. This study was realized through the research about the literature available and with the aid of systematic literature review, a survey of KE studies. The objective with the survey and analysis of cases, is to elaborate a learning KE, by allowing the methodology to be disseminated in universities. As main result the study presents a class plan step by step, with the structured proposed approach and with potential for replication. Additionally, the study presents an experiment that shows the application of this proposal in a group of students of product design of the third year, the progress and results. In this way it was possible to propose an approach and to test its efficacy. Keywords: consumer-oriented technology, product design, Kansei feeling, Kansei Engineering, Kansei methodology, design management

A group nonadditive multiattribute consumer-oriented Kansei evaluation model with an application to traditional crafts

The aesthetic aspects of products have become critical factors in achieving higher consumer satisfaction. This study deals with evaluation of commercial products according to the Kansei, which is an individual subjective impression reflecting the aesthetic appeal of products. To do so, we have proposed a three-phase group nonadditive multiattribute Kansei evaluation model. Particularly, a novel approach is first proposed to generate Kansei profiles involving fuzzy uncertainty as well as semantic overlapping of Kansei data. Second, a target-oriented Kansei evaluation function is proposed to induce Kansei satisfaction utility according to a consumer’s personal Kansei preference, which provides a good description of the consumer’s preference. Third, after formulating a general multiattribute target-oriented (MATO) Kansei evaluation function, a nonadditive MATO Kansei evaluation function is proposed based on an analogy between the general MATO Kansei evaluation function and the Choquet integral, in which an entropy-based method is utilized to estimate the fuzzy measure on a subset of Kansei attributes. The main advantages of our model are its abilities to deal with semantic overlapping of Kansei data, different types of personalized Kansei preferences, as well as mutual dependence among multiple Kansei preferences. An application to Kansei evaluation for hand-painted Kutani cups, one of the traditional craft items in Japan, is conducted to illustrate how our model works as well as its effectiveness and advantages