Design Based on Kansei

Abstract

When a design approach uses Kansei engineering, we give our attention to the behaviors of people when they perceive images or objects including products, and study how their personal preferences or cultural bases work to their feelings. ‘Pleasure’ would be one of the major feelings from the impression occured by Kansei. However, when designing products, designers are not only concerned with the visual appearances but also the other properties of the product. Objects are not only looked at in isolation, but are seen in a context, are handled, touched, sometimes also heard or even tasted. Therefore it is important that a wider range of experience, a fuller integrated Kansei appreciation, is incorporated into the design approach. In this chapter, we introduce the basic ideas and the movement of figuring out the strucure of Kansei in Japan, and how to apply Kansei to design approaches.