Automated emotional design generation for NEV wheel hubs: Integrating StyleGAN2-ADA and WOA-SVR within Kansei engineering

PurposeThis study provides a comprehensive overview of the research landscape of Kansei engineering (KE) within the domain of emotional clothing design. It explores the pivotal technologies, challenges and potential future directions of KE, offering application methodologies and theoretical underpinnings to support emotional clothing design.Design/methodology/approachThis study briefly introduces KE, outlining its overarching research methodologies and processes. This framework lays the groundwork for advancing research in clothing Kansei. Subsequently, by reviewing literature from both domestic and international sources, this research initially explores the application of KE in the design and evaluation of clothing products as well as the development of intelligent clothing design systems from the vantage point of designers. Second, it investigates the role of KE in the customization of online clothing recommendation systems and the optimization of retail environments, as perceived by consumers. Finally, with the research methodologies of KE as a focal point, this paper discusses the principal challenges and opportunities currently confronting the field of clothing Kansei research.FindingsAt present, studies in the domain of clothing KE have achieved partial progress, but there are still some challenges to be solved in the concept, technical methods and area of application. In the future, multimodal and multisensory user Kansei acquisition, multidimensional product deconstruction, artificial intelligence (AI) enabling KE research and clothing sales environment Kansei design will become new development trends.Originality/valueThis study provides significant directions and concepts in the technology, methods and application types of KE, which is helpful to better apply KE to emotional clothing design.

This study highlights and proposed the integration framework between Kansei Engineering (KE) and Kano Method (KM) in the product development. Kansei Engineering (KE) used is related to emotional needs of consumers of a product, while Kano Method (KM) is the articulation of the quality attributes of product. Through the survey conducted using the questionnaires developed of 6 Kansei Words (i.e. Miserable- Comfortable (MC), Slippery-Firm (SF), Irritating-Convenience (IC), Boring-Attractive (BA), Simple- Stylish (SS), and Ugly- Beautiful (UB)), the preference scale (between Dislike to Strongly Like), and 9 quality attributes based Functional vs. Dysfunctional questions, we use the design of pen product as a case study to justify the integration framework proposed. The survey is distributed to 220 students in higher education public institutions in Melaka, Malaysia. In this study, the result showed that any correlation existed between the emotional design (KE) and quality attributes (KM). However, the most of the correlation existed are on the functional elements of quality attributes.

It is important to work closely with customers to ensure that products will meet the needs and requirements of customers. Emotional design is the relationship between the emotional response and design appearance that focuses on the needs and experiences of users. Emotional design is to design products that provide consumer satisfaction by focusing not only on the function, form and usability but also on the needs and demands for the users and capturing the voice of the customer. Kansei Engineering is one of the methods used to transform customers' feelings into design parameters. The furniture sector is one of the most affected by customer perceptions among other sector. Although the furniture industry has achieved a significant growth momentum, in the literature, it is understood that there is no structure that can design products in the shortest time, with the highest quality and lowest cost by considering the emotional needs of the customers. In the study, a structure that uses Kansei Engineering and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is proposed to determine the relationships between the products and the feelings affecting the general preferences of the users in developing the baby cradle design strategy. This study is aimed to determine the perceptual relationships between the customers and the baby cradle by creating factor groups which reduce the number of variables.

Product attributes which can elicit positive or negative emotions among users, determine product acceptance in market. Different cognitive theories of emotion are found in literature for emotional product design. These theories explain the various aspects of underlying phenomena of emotion generation based on product attributes and their impact on product choice. In present paper, six popular cognitive theories of emotion (viz. ‘Kansei Engineering’, ‘Theories of product personality’, ‘Pleasure model’, ‘Product Appraisal Model’, ‘Emotional Design Model’, and, ‘Technology as Experience Framework’) have been reviewed, stating their potential benefits and limitations. An integrated theoretical framework of emotional product design has been proposed by incorporating different potential approaches of earlier mentioned cognitive theories of emotion. It is expected that developed framework would be helpful to industrial designers, ergonomist, product innovation managers and cognitive scientists towards better emotional product design.

Currently, any industries face higher competition in their business pertinent to the customers' demands and product design requirements. Customer requirements and satisfaction measurement can be achieved through various methods. This paper presents an integrative framework of Kansei engineering (KE) and Kano model, applied to a product (light bulb changer LBC). KE captures and translates the emotional needs of the customer (Kansei), whereas Kano model is inserted into it to investigate the relationship between service quality attribute performance and Kansei. On this research, the integration between KE and KM in product development approach is applied though a daily life product as a case study (LBC product). The results show that the mechanical mechanism consisting of spring fingers with pvc, round grip and plastic telescopic pole is preferred by customers. This study found that the perceived or quality attributes are influenced by the emotional design or Kansei response. It provides the useful spectrum to other researchers to gain more powerful product development in the future, and stay on the customer satisfaction and requirement track.

Individual products and models on the market must be specifically differentiated from the rest to meet user demand. In terms of consumer purchasing behaviour, consumers increasingly base their decisions on subjective terms or the impression that the product leaves on them, both in terms of functionality, usability, safety, and price adequacy, and regarding the emotions and feelings that it triggers in them. This demand has lead both Asia and Europe to implement new methodologies to develop new products, such as “emotional design” or Kansei engineering. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on the most relevant methodologies based on Kansei engineering and their relevant results in the specific discipline of product design, addressing these five questions: (RQ1) How many studies on KE and emotional design are there in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases from 1995 to February 2021? (RQ2) Which research topics and types of KE are addressed? (RQ3) Who is leading the research on KE and emotional design? (RQ4) What are the benefits and drawbacks of using and applying the methodology? (RQ5) What are the limitations of the current research? We analysed 87 studies focusing on the Kansei methodology used for product design and device technologies (e.g., shape design, actuators, sensors, structure) and aesthetic aspects (e.g., Kansei words selection, the quantification of measured emotions of results, and detected shortcomings), and provided the database with all the collected information. One identified and highlighted sector in the results is the electronic–technological-device sector. Results confirm that this type of methodology has a majority and direct application in these sectors, and they are widely represented in the automotive and electronics industries. Lastly, this SLR provides researchers with a guide for comparative emotional-design work, and facilitates future designers who want to implement emotional design in their work by selecting the specific type according to the results of the SLR.

Wheel hubs have undergone new form changes as an essential part of New Energy Vehicles (NEV). At the same time, consumers' emotional preferences for the wheel hub design of NEV differ from those of traditional vehicles. However, designers' original knowledge and experience cannot be fully applied, which has limitations. Generative algorithms have been widely used in product design. Therefore, this paper proposes a form design method that combines Kansei Engineering (KE) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) to investigate consumers' emotional preferences for wheel hub form design of NEV and provide designers and manufacturers with design insights. First, a wheel hub dataset is established by collecting and processing images from the website to train GAN and generate various design alternatives. Second, the experts deconstruct the wheel hub form into main features and screen several representative samples. Third, a Kansei questionnaire is distributed to investigate users' emotional preferences and satisfaction with the NEV wheel hub form. Next, the questionnaire data is analyzed and visualized to obtain the relationship between emotional preferences and design features to form a design guide. Finally, Design solutions are selected from the generated wheel hub alternatives according to the design guidelines to realize design automation. This study proposes a systematic method for NEV wheel hub form design, which provides theoretical and practical support for designers to meet user needs more efficiently.

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.

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.

This article considers the shaping methods in architecture and design, namely emotional design and ergo design and Kansei engineering. The essence of these shaping methods explains how these methods relate to each other and how they interact at different levels. There is a comparison of these shaping methods and an explanation why they should develop in parallel. It describes why these sciences are interpreted as human-oriented methods of object-based shaping and how they force us to rethink the human approach to the perception to familiar objects, and also describes their influence on the perception of surrounding objects by humans. Each of the presented shaping methods is considered as a new branch affecting different human life aspects. Article considers the fundamental factors of shaping methods, their relevance in the modern world, both as in the industrial and in the research worlds. Methods can be viewed collectively and separately, since each of them is functional and independent.

Products classification in emotional design using a basic-emotion based semantic differential method

Emotional product design is of great importance in new product development (NPD). Especially, Kansei engineering has been widely advocated because of its effectiveness and reliability in handling consumers' emotional requirements. However, the following key issues in Kansei engineering have not been well addressed: 1) how to capture human emotions, 2) how to identify the relationships between products and emotional needs, and 3) how a product can be improved to better fit consumers' emotional needs. This research aims at realizing a product design system for emotional effect (PDSEE) to facilitate emotional design processes. Generally, the proposed PDSEE comprises three modules, i.e. an emotional needs management module (ENMM) to capture and manipulate customer emotions, a product classification module (PCM) to examine the relationship between the product and emotions, and a product reconfiguration module (PRM) to manage and analyze product attributes so as to achieve product configurations with desired emotional impacts. To illustrate the capability of the prototype PDSEE, a case study of wedding ring design is presented. The results show that the prototype system is able to handle a large number of Kansei adjectives, address relationships between Kansei and products, and effectively identify key product parameters for designing new products with better emotional impacts.

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

Product development becomes more and more complex. Products obtain more and more functions and at the same time they must be still attractive for the customers to ensure a successful product launch. To predict their acceptance and to gain knowledge on how to design attractive products new methods are developed in the field of the emotional design. Such a method is the Kansei Engineering, which collects the customers hidden subjective needs and their translation into concrete products. We present and validate a new form of the Kansei Engineering method for emotional assessment by the customers during the product development, based on an interactive product experience in Virtual Reality. The major novelty of our kind of method is the use of immersive representations which focuses on both, the product itself and its environmental context, too. Customers experience these virtual representations quite dynamically and with this freely describe their emotional influence on them. We come to the conclusion that more reliable emotional customer feedback can be acquired through the implementation of the proposed context paradigm shift. The fusion of product and environmental context enables the simultaneous role of the customer as a subject (actor) and an object (observer) in the virtual world, thus promoting reliable emotional reactions. Despite of some disadvantages, we propose Immersive Kansei Engineering as a reliable method for emotional product assessment by the customer.

Business innovation is one of the factors driving a company for providing values for stakeholders toward sustainable competitive advantages. The mentioned values vis-à- vis not merely internal stakeholders, but also external stakeholders. Subsequently, this paper elaborates grand theory within stakeholders theory. The mentioned sustainable competitive advantages are achieved through the disruptive innovation that revamps the constellation of sustainable competitive advantages. The disruptive innovation is implemented and intertwined through industry 4.0 that covers trilogy of physical, digital, and biology. Subsequently, the mentioned implementation is geared toward benefits of Making Indonesia 4.0 through Indonesia local wisdom and setting. Precisely, it further elaborates the Product Design Engineering (PDE). This PDE discipline incorporates the concept of its evolutionary theories from cognitive psychology; human factors in product design; Kansei engineering; emotional design; affective engineering; and user experience design. Keywords: affective engineering; cognitive psychology; disruptive innovation; Kansei engineering; user empathy