The difference between the sense of touch and the sense of sight on the image of plastic texture

Most of the papers discussed about human’s feeling were concentrated on form or color, which is based on sense of sight; seldom were discussed about texture, which is based on sense of touch. As a result, designer usually lacked of useful principles on designing the texture of product. In order to helping designer in designing texture, in this research ,based on the theory and processes of KANSEI Engineering, we tried to find out the differences and the relations on image of plastic materials between senses of sight and touch. By constructing image space from Factor Analysis, 9 image words were selected as subjective words for evaluating the image of plastic texture. 3 types of plastic material (PP, ABS and rubber) and 6 kinds of etching pattern were selected as attributes of plastic, then 18 samples were consisted, which were well-controlled made by plastic maker for evading the inappropriate influence of other factor’s. 3 experiments of evaluating the image of 18 samples were conducted, 1) by sense of touch, 2) by sense of sight, 3) by multi-sense of sight and touch simultaneously. After analyzing and comparison the results of experiments by ANOVA, MANOVA and Quantification I Analysis, main results were concluded as fellows: 1. Material was the main influence factor on tactile sense; on the contrary, etching pattern was the main influence factor on sight and multi-sense. 2. No matter in any sensation, there were not any significant interaction between materials and etching patterns. 3. Although the results of 3 experiments were different, the results of multi-sense were similar to the sense of touch. 4. By establishing the reasoning functions from Quantification I Analysis, we had more precise knowledge about the effects of materials and patterns for different image.