Immersive Kansei Engineering : A New Method and its Potentials

Emotional design is one of the most important methods in modern product design. It was highlighted after Donald A. Norman published his book Emotional design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. Emotional design addresses people’s needs and hopes which is in the center of the development of product design and product technology. Due to the lack of strong theoretical basis and quantitative analysis, many products can’t reach the goal of their designers with Emotional feelings, nor can consumer’s emotional understandings be similar to the designers’ emotional expectations. This paper analyzes the concept of emotional design and some difficulties which designers must to be faced in their emotional designing works, discusses on product shape design according to emotional design. On this basis, the Kansei engineering and emotional design methods are described in details.

Extended-Reality Technologies: An Overview of Emerging Applications in Medical Education and Clinical Care.

This study used two product development methods: Kansei and value engineering. Kansei engineering was used to identify and translate consumer psychological impressions or feelings in the form of Kansei words to the design parameters, while value engineering was used to analyze the functional properties by considering cost, reliability, and performance. The consumers determined the priority attributes of analog rice products, namely a good taste, a fluffy and soft texture, as well as a bright color. Three alternative variations of the product development concept were formulated based on these priorities. The concept with the highest value was then concluded as an analog rice produced from 90% Sago flour and 10% MOCAF (Modified Cassava Flour) with a value of 1,131.

The perceptual behavior of consumers on a product displayed in the market has a vital role in analyzing the importance given to that product. Therefore, various strategies have been developed to understand this consumer behavior in the selection of products. Immersive technologies like virtual, augmented, and mixed reality are among them. With the foremost feature of immersion in the virtual world and interaction of users with virtual objects, virtual reality, and augmented reality have unlocked their potential in research and a user-friendly tool for analyzing consumer behavior. In addition to these technologies, mixed reality also has a significant role in investigating consumer behavior. Studies on immersive technologies in food applications are vast, hence this review focuses on the applications of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality in the food selection behavior of consumers. The behavioral studies are elicited to develop new products based on consumer needs, to understand the shopping behavior in supermarkets for real-time usage, and to know the influence of emotions in a selection of products. The findings suggest that virtual, augmented, and mixed reality induce immersion of the users in food selection behavioral studies. Information on the technological advancements in the tools used for bringing immersion and interaction are discussed for its futuristic applications in food. Though immersive technology gives users a realistic virtual environment experience, its application in food systems is in the budding stage. More research on human response studies would contribute to its innovative and inevitable application in the future.

Virtual reality (VR) technology has become a growing force in entertainment, education, science, and manufacturing due to the capability of providing users with immersive experiences and natural interaction. Although common input devices such as controllers, gamepads, and trackpads have been integrated into mainstream VR systems for user-content interaction, they cannot provide users with realistic haptic feedback. Some prior work tracks and maps the physical objects into the virtual space to allow users to interact with these objects directly, which improves users’ sense of reality in the virtual environment. However, most of them use additional hardware sensors, which inevitably increases the cost. In this research, a lightweight approach is proposed to synchronize the positions and motions between physical and digital objects without any extra costs. We use the real-time captured video data from in-built cameras on a VR headset and employ feature points based algorithms to generate projections of the physical objects in the virtual world. Our approach does not rely on additional sensors but just uses components available in a VR headset. Our approach allows users to interact with target objects with their hands directly without the need for specially designed trackers, markers, and other hardware devices as used in previous work. With our approach, users can get more realistic operational feedback when interacting with corresponding virtual objects.

A new paradigm for relationship between humans and computers has been called artificial reality, virtual reality or cyberspace. Using threedimensional computer graphics, interactive devices, and high-resolution display, a virtual world can be realized in which one can pick up imaginary objects as if they were physical world. Using this technology and Kansei Engineering, Virtual Space Decision Support System has been developing in Matsushita Electric Works. Kansei Engineering is defined as a “translation system of a customer’s favorite or image into real design components” (Nagamachi, 1986) can be used for the customers to design furniture which just they image and experience them in virtual space. And in future, it will be able to deal with whole of house, then customers can design their house and check the housing performances such a light, sound, vibration, temperature, air and living-space amenity. This paper details Kansei Engineering and Virtual Space Decision Support System.

Typing is fundamental to our daily lives, particularly at work. Virtual reality (VR) technology has seen increasing interest in incorporating it into job training and rehabilitation programs. The concept of this study involves displaying the effect of virtual hands on a user's view in VR environment to mimic their real-time hand movements. The main objective of this study was to investigate muscle activity and task performance with and without virtual hand representation during VR typing tasks. As part of the study, wireless electromyography (EMG) sensors were used to measure the left and right neck splenius capitis muscles' activity (LSC and RSC), and typing performance was measured in terms of actual and net typing speed (WPM) and accuracy percentage (%). In addition, the NASA-TLX subjective workload scale was used to compare the users' mental workload with and without the virtual hand representations. This study involved 15 participants (7 females and 8 males), all over the age between 18 and 30 years who participated voluntarily and had no symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders or back/neck pain within 7 days of participation. During the study, participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: typing in VR with and without virtual hand representation. The Oculus Quest 2 VR headset and a Logitech k830 Bluetooth keyboard were utilized. A typing test was conducted using typingtest.com with five minutes of typing per condition. The results of the study indicated that virtual hand representation had a positive effect on typing performance, resulting in significantly higher typing speed (125.86% higher net speed) and accuracy (1.63% higher) compared to the condition without virtual hand representation. Additionally, the study found that typing in VR with virtual hand representation resulted in a significantly higher normalized muscle activities (% maximum voluntary contractions) of the neck muscles (17% higher for LSC and 19.58% higher for RSC) than in VR without virtual hand representation. Participants showed significantly lower NASA-TLX values with the virtual hand representation. In other words, lower mental demand was recorded during typing tasks with virtual hand representation. The findings of this study suggested that the presence of virtual hands for typing in VR resulted in more active typing behavior and improved performance. Increasing neck muscle activities during virtual hand representation could be associated with more active typing behavior and improved performance. Furthermore, participants perceived the virtual hand representation condition to be less mentally demanding due to the increased sensory feedback provided. Virtual hand representation was able to enhance typing efficiency, although further design configuration and improvement will be required to improve typing speed. With more realistic virtual hand representations, haptic feedback, and customizing virtual hand size and position to match the user's real hand size and position, virtual hand representation can be more effective in typing.

This paper proposes a Blended Reality Agent called "BReA" that can exist in both the real and virtual world and has communicative advantages that is more than simply the sum of those of a robotic agent and an on-screen agent. BReA can seamlessly transfer between the real world and virtual world and users can communicate with BReA without interruption during the transference. We conducted a field test and showed that users can recognize when it points from the virtual world to a real world object after it moves from the real world to virtual world. This result supports a hypothesis that communicating with BReA helps users recognize the link between real world and virtual world objects and virtual world information.

It is very important to predict the reaction of customers to future products. Sample pictures and line sketches are commonly used for discovering consumers’ demands. However, these two agents are difficult to express the real product form clearly and comprehensively, which may affect the accuracy of consumer affection prediction. In this paper, a method based on Kansei engineering via virtual reality (VR) has been proposed to construct a mapping relationship between form elements and consumer affection from four dimensions of the overall, unit, interrelation, and detail (OUID), so as to provide references for product form design. The correlation between product form elements and the perceptual image was studied with multiple linear regression analysis and partial correlation analysis. The different effects of VR, sketches, and pictures on user affection prediction were compared in this paper as well. A hairdryer has been employed as an example to illustrate the proposed method. The results show that compared with sketch and picture, VR based-prediction model is more accurate and reliable in predicting users’ emotional preferences. In addition to the unit form, the overall features, interrelation, and details are also the key factors affecting consumer preference. Highlight Based on Kansei Engineering, this paper investigated the correlation between the form elements of the product and the user's affection via VR. The proposed approach can help designers to quickly and accurately capture the user's perceptual image and transform it into design elements. The different effects of VR, sketches, and pictures on customer affection prediction were compared. A decomposition model is proposed to analyse the product form elements on four dimensions (overall features, unit form, interrelation, and details).

In today's competitive market, successful product development hinges on understanding user needs and experiences. With the proliferation of expanding technologies like the Internet of Things, developers can gather vast amounts of data about user interactions. To leverage this wealth of information effectively, a user-centred approach to product development is imperative. This paper explores the convergence of usability and emotional design in product development, examining their interplay and impact on user experience. Through a review of existing literature, it investigates influential factors shaping the prioritisation of usability and emotional design elements. Key questions addressed include identifying these influential factors, assessing their impact on usability and emotional design, and elucidating their interrelationships. By shedding light on these dynamics, this systematic review aims to inform product developers and designers, facilitating the creation of products that resonate with users on both usableand emotional levels.

20 - Affective meaning: The Kansei Engineering approach

In the fiercely competitive product market, product designs have already moved from the product-oriented approach to a marketing-oriented approach, and gradually to a customer-oriented approach. Therefore, it is of high necessity to study users’ emotional needs aroused by the product's multi-dimensional design variables. This paper contributes a systematically emotional design method of products’ hard interface based on Kansei Engineering (KE), which can be used to design a product that echoes users’ emotions. Based on the representative pairwise Kansei image words and multi-dimensional key design variables obtained by the consumer-oriented techniques, the KE models are established. Finally, the integration of KE models and Genetic Algorithm is employed to search for a near-optimal design scheme. This proposed method is effectively demonstrated in terms of the mini digital camera. It can be used in various design cases to optimise the product emotional design.

An improved Kansei engineering method based on the mining of online product reviews

ESRA19-0696 Non-pharmacological methods for comfort and pain management (virtual reality, musicotherapy, hypnosis,……)

Integrating aesthetic and emotional preferences in social robot design: An affective design approach with Kansei Engineering and Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network