Development of a new cultural design process using Kansei engineering and fuzzy techniques

Abstract

Purpose Belief in Mazu has a crucial cultural status in Taiwan and the coastal area of Fujian, China. The design and manufacture of apparel and accessories to be placed on statues of the deity are also considered a sacred and critical part of the religion’s cultural and artistic inheritance. The crown hat of Mazu is one of the most essential elements of the deity’s apparel. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This study explored the styles of Mazu crown hats using Kansei engineering (KE). People generally use adjectives words to provide aesthetic evaluations. Fuzzy theory is suitable for processing linguistic problems that include vagueness, thereby providing a reasonable method of quantifying such aesthetic evaluations. Therefore, this study first established a fuzzy positioning model (FPM) of word evaluations for analysis. Factor analysis was used to obtain representative image adjectives that represented Mazu’s image. Fuzzy analysis methods were then employed to rank the various image adjectives through evaluation words and to determine the differences between adjectives. Finally, on the basis of image analysis results and expert suggestions, the crown hat was redesigned and its suitability verified. Findings Four results were obtained. First, four image adjectives appropriate for representing Mazu’s image were identified, of which “noble and kind” is the most suitable. Second, fuzzy analysis was found to successfully rank style images. Third, the crown hat style and design characteristics suitable for Mazu were acquired. Fourth, the verification demonstrated that the redesign effectively enhanced the perceived image of the crown hat design. Originality/value This study employed KE to improve the design of a Mazu crown hat. The proposed FPM can aid the development of cultural and creative design.

New Product Development Method Trends and Future Research

“…The obtained results can be used to determine the size, shape, features, style, and color of the desired product. Papers that reported the use of Kansei Engineering include [22,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37].…”

“…KE was used by 14 papers that used KE in their studies. Papers that used KE such as [13,14,18,23,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]. Only four papers from the 14 papers have a case study that implemented the KE method.…”

“…Product Design in this category from the 50 selected paper in Table 2 we could summarize in the following categories such as Mechanical product (medical nursing bed [30], Thai ceramics [32], Bottle design [34], Mazu Crowned design [35], real estate preference [19], open molding manufacturing [47], dishwasher [42], airplane tale [8], sneakers [22], construction technology [24], medical infusion [25], semiconductor [36], aquatic robotic gripper [26], and Product Services (banking service [48], door to door delivery service [12], innovation research center [23], real estate preference [19], railway catering service [40]). We can use NPD tools such as Kansei Engineering, TRIZ, and Axiomatic Design for mechanical products.…”

Development of design system for product pattern design based on Kansei engineering and BP neural network

“…The practical application of Kansei Engineering and the production of the first batch of "sensible products" started in the automobile industry and achieved great success. After that, Kansei engineering was widely used in various fields, such as product design (Quan et al, 2018;Sakornsathien, 2019;Kim, 2019), clothes design (Chen and Cheng, 2019;Rosyidi, 2017) cultural design (Liu, 2019), service design (Hsiao, 2016;Restuputri, 2020) and so on. Although the application of Kansei engineering theory in other fields has been very mature, there are relatively few researches on the sensibility of product patterns, mainly focusing on the sensibility of simple types of patterns, such as crack patterns on cup, leather grain patterns on car dashboard panels (Matsubara, 2010), and research on consumer perception of fabric patterns and clothing patterns such as stripes, grid and wave point.…”

Research on optimization design of men's suit considering users' perception

“…This method has been used in the design and research of many products such as electromechanical products (Quan et al , 2019), scientific research instruments (Chen et al , 2019), auto parts (Vieira et al , 2017; Zhou et al , 2021), household products (Kittidecha and Yamada, 2019) and medical products (Zhou et al , 2021). In the field of clothing design, Kansei Engineering is used in the rational design of various types of clothing products, such as jackets (Kim et al , 2015), vests (Chen and Cheng, 2019), dresses (Zhou and Xu, 2020a), functional clothing (Tsenga and Linb, 2011) and clothing accessories (Liu et al , 2019).…”