The harmonics of kansei images

Delivering the right product experience, which is a user’s reflection of a combination of functionality, usage, cost and appearance, is a key factor for product acquisition and commercial success. Establishing and representing the relation between a product’s shape and the perceived aesthetic sensibility it elicits on a person (kansei), is a key factor in the design of tools to support designers in delivering the right product’s appearance. This paper presents an approach to mathematically represent a product’s kansei based on the frequency signature (harmonics) of a shape. This mathematical representation should allow the automatic indexing and retrieval of images from a repository of design precedents. This is done through a series of experiments aiming at determining the relation between images, kansei words and the frequency signatures of those images. Tests suggest the method is promising and can be used for indexing images in Content Based Image Retrieval Systems.