About the nature of Kansei information, from abstract to concrete

Designer’s expertise refers to the scientific fields of emotional design and kansei information. This paper aims to answer to a scientific major issue which is, how to formalize designer’s knowledge, rules, skills into kansei information systems. Kansei can be considered as a psycho-physiologic, perceptive, cognitive and affective process through a particular experience. Kansei oriented methods include various approaches which deal with semantics and emotions, and show the correlation with some design properties. Kansei words may include semantic, sensory, emotional descriptors, and also objects names and product attributes. Kansei levels of information can be seen on an axis going from abstract to concrete dimensions. Sociological value is the most abstract information positioned on this axis. Previous studies demonstrate the values the people aspire to drive their emotional reactions in front of particular semantics. This means that the value dimension should be considered in kansei studies. Through a chain of value-function-product attributes it is possible to enrich design generation and design evaluation processes. This paper describes some knowledge structures and formalisms we established according to this chain, which can be further used for implementing computer aided design tools dedicated to early design. These structures open to new formalisms which enable to integrate design information in a non-hierarchical way. The foreseen algorithmic implementation may be based on the association of ontologies and bag-of-words.AN

Locally identifying coloring in bounded expansion classes of graphs

A proper vertex coloring of a graph is said to be locally identifying if the sets of colors in the closed neighborhood of any two adjacent non-twin vertices are distinct. The lid-chromatic number of a graph is the minimum number of colors used by a locally identifying vertex-coloring. In this paper, we prove that for any graph class of bounded expansion, the lid-chromatic number is bounded. Classes of bounded expansion include minor closed classes of graphs. For these latter classes, we give an alternative proof to show that the lid-chromatic number is bounded. This leads to an explicit upper bound for the lid-chromatic number of planar graphs. This answers in a positive way a question of Esperet et al [L. Esperet, S. Gravier, M. Montassier, P. Ochem and A. Parreau. Locally identifying coloring of graphs. Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 19(2), 2012.]

Synchronization of coupled noisy oscillators: Coarse-graining from continuous to discrete phases

The theoretical description of synchronization phenomena often relies on coupled units of continuous time noisy Markov chains with a small number of states in each unit. It is frequently assumed, either explicitly or implicitly, that coupled discrete-state noisy Markov units can be used to model mathematically more complex coupled noisy continuous phase oscillators. In this work we explore conditions that justify this assumption by coarse-graining continuous phase units. In particular, we determine the minimum number of states necessary to justify this correspondence for Kuramoto-like oscillators

Mapping a multi-sensory identity territory at the early design stage

This article presents a kansei design methodology. It is placed at the very beginning of the design process and aims to influence the following steps in order to improve the user's understanding and experiencing of the designed product. The experimentation combines in a subtle way the design thinking approach of learning by doing and the kansei engineering quantitative approach. The research presented is based on the results of a previous study that defined the semantic and emotional scope of future hybrid cars for European using visual stimuli. This kansei design methodology creates and assesses multi-sensory atmospheres is order to provide tangible direction composed of vision, touch, hearing and smell stimuli. From the cognitive and affective responses of the 42 participants we were able to detail 3 directions for future cars interiors that aim to enrich the styling design briefs and to influence the design strategies such as the management of the different grades. The research presented here was supported by the Kansei Design department from Toyota Motor Europe (TME-KD). This collaboration also brought an industrial context to it.SUPPORTED BY TOYOTA EUROP