Quantification of Shape Design and Its Correlation with User’s Preference

Abstract

Quantitative evaluation of shape is one of the remaining problems in product design. Since product shape is an important feature affects users’ intention to purchase, knowing characteristics of preferred designs is helpful in designing attractive products.When a person watches some shape, a potential field named “induction field” is aroused in the brain, corresponding to the strength of the stimulation of the optic nerve. The induction field has a close relation between the strength of the impression. Value of the induction field in a certain point can be calculated based on the distance of the point from the contour line of the figure and the strength of the pixels expressed by 256 levels gray scale. Overall tendency of the induction field can be expressed by two values that are surface integral of the shape along the plane (PE), and difference of the maximum and minimum values of the strength of the induction field (DI). PE corresponds to the strength of the overall impression and DI shows the sharpness of the shape. The paper used smartphone as a case study and investigated the correlation between users’ preference with PE and DI. The result showed negative correlations. The fact suggested that relatively calm and ambiguous shape is preferred in case of smartphone design. Through this study, it was concluded that the induction field is helpful in quantifying shape designs and determining preferred designs among several design plans. This is a significant step in reviewing product design processes by engineering approaches.

Identification of Product Specifications Based on KANO Model and Application to Ecodesign

“…However, it is not always possible to find delighters in real products, especially for matured products/markets, since people soon start to think they are must-bes, once it is build-in commercial products. The author surveyed weights of design specifications and estimated eco-efficiencies of the design specifications in a previous study [7], and explained that it is possible to enhance product eco-efficiency by focusing some specifications. The author notified customer's voice such as "this specification is important, but I am satisfied at the current level."…”