Visualizing wood interiors: A qualitative assessment of what people react to and how they describe it

Wood is more than a material with technical characteristics. It is a material with aesthetic qualities and is the object of subjective appraisal. Today, it is common to use computers to show how a room or product will look when it is produced. In communicating the aesthetic properties of wood in such cases, the ways people experience wood are of interest, as are what is important to focus on and what is best avoided. The objective ofthis study was to explore and gather descriptions ofcomputer-visualized wood interiors through qualitative interviews. The Grounded Theory method was used to get a map of what people react to in such images. The principle is to sort data into groups consisting of aspects of a certain property. Eighteen pictures were used in a two-by-two comparison study. Twenty-one persons were interviewed for about 20 minutes each. The results indicate that good visualization of wood should avoid erroneous details, repetitive patterns and lighting, or shadowing errors. Another result is recognition of the difference between seeing and describing. It was hard for respondents to separate what they liked/disliked from what they understood. Most respondents also reacted more to how the wood in the pictures handled shades and colors than to its textures. This could mean that photorealism is no guarantee for getting acceptance for the picture. In addition, more important than high resolution is for wood to be part of the whole picture and not stand out or appear more processed than the surroundings.