Psychophysiological Applications in Kansei Design

In order to describe emerging methods and means for Kansei design, this chapter overviews three approaches involving an intense collaboration between the fields of design and psychophysiology: The use of tools built for psychophysiology and of techniques based on constructivist psychology theory, in order to support designers’ inspirational work focusing on human beings’ behaviors, experience, and mental constructs; The use of knowledge created by psychophysiological research as an inspirational source of knowledge and as a conveyor of it for all along the design process. This approach takes into account the latest scientific progresses in psychophysiology, and concerns greatly about the scientific nature of the considered knowledge; The use of psychophysiology tools to complete design requirements. Each approach presented here is supported by an applicative example. These interdisciplinary approaches lead towards the structuring of Kansei Design as an application field of Kansei Science.

Kansei’s Physiological Measurement and Its Application (2)

Physiological signals or biosignals are electrical, chemical, or mechanical signals that created by biological events such as a beating heart or a contracting muscle producing signals that can be measured and analyzed. These signals are generated from the metabolic activities of human internal organs. Therefore, in certain conditions, physiological signals have different pattern between healthy and unhealthy individuals. Based on this information, generally, physicians take some action and treat their patients. However, utilizing physiological signals is a new approach in Kansei engineering research fields for coping with human sensitivity. This study focuses on the possibility of physiological signal application in Kansei engineering.

Kansei’s Physiological Measurement and Its application (1)

Recent behavioral medicine studies have revealed that various human secretory substances change according to mental states. These substances, the hormones and immune substances show transient increase against mental stress. Therefore it is frequently introduced as an objective index (biomarker) of mental stress. Especially the biomarker which is detectable by human saliva is expected to be a new and practical stress measurement as it can be sampled in less stressful and noninvasive manner unlike blood and urine. In this chapter, the biomarker research, its background, methodology, experiment, and numerical simulation approaches are introduced. Also in the end, it is stated as a possible approach towards a measurement of Kansei.

Rural Scenery Narrative and Field Experiences

Farmers create rural scenery by farming the land. From their memories of the experience of farming the land, they also create their own particular narratives of that rural scenery. Each such narrative differs not only according to the particular environment of each field, but also according to the personal experiences of the farmer. As the narration is repeated, the rural scenery narrative can become the narrative of everyone in the community and this shared narrative can then influence the behavior of all the members in that rural society. The authors call this a ‘normative scenery narrative’. This chapters explores how normative scenery narratives differ according to the various experiences of farmers in rural fields and does so by documenting a case study of old Otamachi in Akita Prefecture, Japan.

Natural Effect of Spatial and Temporal Color Sequence on Human Color Impression

The way in which a signal sequence of several colors (temporal information), as well as how a linear, toroidal, or circular sequences of several colors (spatial information) affect human color impression is examined. To investigate spatial or temporal effects of color sequences, a hexagonal projection of an RGB color space is considered. The projected route area indicates the magnitude of naturalness (as in rainbows) of color sequences, with the minimum sequence being similar to the order of rainbow colors. Using the projected route area with route complexity, a simple fuzzy model of human color impression is proposed. Clarifying the relationship between route complexity and the impressions of subjects for a projected route area revealed that the majority (>26%) of subjects of nearly all ages have natural impressions when the minimum route area is large. Thus, this model describes the spatial or temporal nature of natural (or unnatural) multicolored sequences.

Affective Facial Expressions Using Auto-Associative Neural Network in Kansei Robot ‘‘Ifbot’’

The authors propose three methods of enabling a Kansei robot, Ifbot, to convey affective expressions using an emotion space composed of an auto-associative neural network. First, the authors attempt to extract the characteristics of Ifbot‘s facial expressions by mapping them to its emotion space using an auto-associative neural network, and create its emotion regions. They then propose a method for generating affective facial expressions using these emotion regions. The authors also propose an emotion-transition method using a path that minimizes the amount of change in an emotion space. Finally, they propose a method for creating personality using the face.

Analyses of People’s Perceptions on Sidewalk Environments Combining Factor Analysis and Rough Sets Approach

This study investigates the relationship between people’s perceptions of sidewalk environments and their component elements. Participants are asked to judge the selected twenty sidewalk photographs with the rating scales through a psychological survey. Two perception factors including harmoniousness and openness are specified through semantic differential technique by using factor analysis. In the meantime the physical components of sidewalk environments are surveyed in the field survey. Then the rough sets approach is applied to link people’s perception factors and physical components of sidewalk environment. The application of the rough sets approach outputs the most important attributes to people’s perceptions, minimal attribute sets without redundancy, and a series of decision rules that represent the relationships between perceptions and physical components of sidewalk environments. The analytical approach helps to better understand people’s perceptions to sidewalk environments in a small city and then establish a useful and constructive ground of discussion for walking environment design and management.

Music and Kansei

In this chapter, at first the authors review the researches on music in Japan Society of Kansei Engineering. Music related researches are classified into 6 categories; Kansei evaluation methodology, music psychological research, physiological measurement, music theoretical research, Kansei music system and recommendation system. Then, the authors present their approaches for research Kansei on melody and rhythm from the music theoretical aspect. A mode, one of the most elemental structures in music, is a sequence of n musical tones, arranged from the 12 tones, that fall within a one-octave range and are chosen and arranged according to the rules of that mode. In this chapter, the authors analyze, using sound tracks composed automatically by computer software, the relationships between modes and Kansei. “Melodic range” is defined as the high and low extent of the tone movements in a mode. Mode and melodic ranges were the parameters they controlled for evaluation by Kansei. Eighteen sample tracks were automatically composed from combinations of six modes and three ranges. Forty-seven Kansei word pairs were used in the research questionnaire. The results of principal component analysis and an analysis of variance reveal a contrast between tracks with major modes and a larger range and tracks with minor modes and small range. The authors also found that modes and ranges can independently or synergistically affect the Kansei. Based on their results, they have developed a real-time melody recognition program that identifies the mode and its corresponding Kansei from music. The authors also studied rhythm with programmed drum patterns and found that the fluctuation of drum beats relates to the degree of activity, with the interval and complexity of the rhythmic variations relating to the strained to bright axis of a principal components loading map.

An Intimate Relation

From the reading of numerous press releases, one may deduce that Japan is a country more and more dedicated to a ‘robot world’. Previously, robots were hidden in plants confined within difficult or dangerous tasks: nowadays robots make themselves visible: humanoids and androids offer home services for elderly. Such a situation is questioning the nature of relationships between human beings and humanoids and highlights how we can understand the human’s position and identity. In becoming part of a family, we could presume that robots should be considered in the position of a child with his or her parent establishing an amazing couple. We will refer to the works of a renowned psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott to understand the way a child may receive the best conditions to become a mature and independent adult. A child when becoming an adolescent is at risk to show possible antisocial behaviours, as symptoms of delinquency. Human beings would certainly prefer the option of an absolute dependence from their robot-child, keeping it waiting in a sort of perpetual adolescence. In that way, human beings would feel more secure not to be challenged in their unshared human hood. Conversely, humans challenging machines and imagining cyber-bodies are to be found in performances and sports events. Researchers consider that robots would emancipate and create a life of their own. Doing so, they seem to offer new opportunities for developing human creativity, eluding the inexpressible threat: shall humanoids overtake human beings in their capacity to run a creative life?