KANSEI ENGINEERING AND THE INFLUENCE OF STIMULUS SETTING IN HUMAN PERCEPTION

The criteria applied to product design are no longer merely technology and market oriented. More subjective criteria, such as sensory-emotional ones, are now being acknowledged as a means to attain product differentiation. This new perspective, however, has also given rise to new challenges, such as finding ways to evaluate such subjective criteria. Thus, one of the goals set by the scientific community is to refine the existing methods of evaluation and to acquire other more efficient ones. Currently the most highly developed and appropriate of all tools and methodologies for carrying out the aforementioned evaluation is Kansei Engineering (KE). This approach is based on the Semantic Differential (SD) method and is used to measure people’s perception of products or services. In traditional SD applications, the most widely used stimuli are images of products presented in an absolutely neutral manner, that is to say, completely detached from their usual setting. This article explores whether people’s perception of a product, in this case elevator cabin controls, is affected by the way the product is displayed.