Abstract:To effectively design tactile textures of product surfaces, it is essential to specify the semantically multilayered and multidimensional structure of human perceptual, emotional, and preferential expressions pertaining to touching materials. We implemented a method to identify individual differences in the structure of these expressions, based on subjective reports of the mutual impacts among 29 adjective dyads used to describe tactile experiences of material samples. Results showed that the 11 university students who responded to 46 types of flat materials were clustered into three statistically different groups. The structures were largely composed of three layers of expressions: psychophysical (bottom), emotional or material attributes (middle), and preferential (top). All groups selected the same adjective dyads encompassed in the bottom layer, relating to percepts of physical quantities, which indicates the similarity of psychophysical percepts among the participants; however, the middle and top layers significantly differed across individuals. These results indicate that under the tested conditions, there are individual differences in the semantic structures of emotional and preferential experiences; however, such differences in psychophysical expressions are relatively minor.

Techniques for modeling hierarchical and multidimensional human perceptual and affective experiences afford further understanding of the affective values of humans with regard to products and services. In this study, we developed a method for the graphical modeling of texture-related perceptual and affective experiences, which were expressed by adjectives. The method enables the establishment of semantically causal relationships among the adjectives using the results of a standard sensory evaluation task based on adjective rating. The initial model was simplified by covariance selection to enable the definition of the causalities based on the assumption that the perception of the physical aspects of material surfaces produces affective and more personal experiences. For the purpose of validation through an experiment, we applied the developed method to the textures of 46 different flat materials and developed a model that was logically comparable to previously developed models. The proposed graphical modeling method promises to facilitate the design of product surfaces and an analysis of the subjective feelings induced by touching them.

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