An efficient method for relating various human impressions to physical features

One of the main topics of Kansei engineering is to associate human's impressions with physical features characterizing certain objects. Recently, such relationships have been applied to impression-based information systems that aim to retrieve/recommend objects suitable for user's impressions. However, such systems restrict use of a variety of expressions concerning each individual's image because the selectable impression words are fixed. To achieve information systems based on individuals' Kansei, it is important to provide a flexible human interface to deal with greater diversity of impression words. The aim of this study is to provide a new method for associating a large variety of impression words with physical features. In this paper, a new class of impression words called “meta-impression” is introduced to associate various impression words with physical features. A meta-impression is defined as an impression whose relationship to physical features has been revealed in past studies. In this paper, the adequacy of our method is presented by the experiment.