Affective Engineering Design
Affective engineering is a Western interpretation of Kansei engineering which has been pioneered by Nagamachi at Hiroshima University since the 1970s. It is about measuring people's subjective responses to products, identifying the properties of the product eliciting those responses, and then using the information to improve the design. At Leeds, we have been applying the principles of affective engineering to product packaging through collaboration with the Faraday Packaging Partnership. The research is motivated by the need to provide scientific underpinnings for decisions made in product design.
Surface textures for enhanced communication (AFTEX)
This three-year project started in the summer of 2006 and is funded by the UK’s EPSRC. It aims to develop the ability to design tactile surface textures for use on products by identifying the features of a texture that generate particular affective responses and developing a process to synthesise new surface textures. This involves building an instrumented artificial fingertip to measure thermal and compliance contact properties; building a 3-dimensional virtual model of the fingertip; and self-report psychology experiments on real surfaces. The project is supported by the Faraday Packaging Partnership and MacDermid Autotype.
AFTEX project website.
Measuring feelings and expectations associated with texture (SynTex)
This EC FP6 funded project started in late 2006 and will run for three years. It is a collaboration between the companies Profactor, Prodintec and Fundermax, and the Universities of Leeds, Amsterdam, Groningen and Linz. The project aims to deliver a new measurement method to 'calculate' the degree to which emotions are associated with a texture; a new investigative method for the modelling of human interpretation of visual and tactile textures; and a method to synthesize artificial textures specified to evoke certain emotions.
SynTex project website.