Conference article

Images aroused by sensory faculties; especially that of touch and vision; play a very important role in human-product interaction. Most studies tackled sensory modalities in isolation; which is somewhat insufficient; as cross-talks among sensory channels would be unduly overlooked. In this study we compared visual and tactile images at the same time; trying to reveal the correlations and distinctiveness of these two primary modalities. In the first stage of the study; we obtained 35 pieces of modern design works as the visual stimuli according to the opinion of interviewed experts. The material compositions of these works were then analyzed and 37 materials were abstracted for tactile evaluation. The vocabularies used by the experts to describe their feelings on evaluating the design works and the materials were grouped into 21 adjective pairs with KJ method. Thirty five subjects were then recruited to give semantic differential evaluation with the scale of the 21 adjective pairs on the 35 visual and 37 tactile stimuli. Through factor analysis; we found four principle factors of image for both of the two modalities. However; the components of adjective pairs in each factor of the two modalities are slightly different. This variation may imply that although tactile and visual sensation often function cooperatively to enhance the perception of each other; they sometime work competitively; the dominant modality will suppress the other one especially for some imagery perception. Finally; this study found that the tactile oriented feeling of roughness may influence visual images. The result of the investigation can help researchers to further understand the influence between multisensory images and to treat it as a useful reference for relative studies; while it can help designers to design products with demanded tactile and visual feeling.

Kansei engineering; Imagery difference between sensations; Semantic differential method; Factor analysis

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