A Study on the Cognitive Thresholds of Formal Styles

Abstract

Formal styles have been recognized as an effective marketing segmentation marker for differentiating various preferences among consumer groups. In recent years, research that focuses on mapping the relationships between consumers’ Kansei feelings and products’ formal elements has become a hot topic in design fields. However, how consumers differentiate one particular product form style from the other is still vaguely understood. The objective of this study is twofold: (1) to search for and verify the range of cognitive thresholds for formal styles and (2) to construct a formal language for better describing formal styles, through scientific processes and such techniques as semantic differential analysis and fuzzy sets theory. To achieve the objective, two experiments are conducted in this study. The first experiment gathers raw data via performing semantic differential analysis on a series of well-perceived-style products by experienced designers. The data gathered are then converted and fine-tuned using fuzzy sets theory to verify the range of cognitive thresholds of formal style. In the second experiment, three products with three different formal styles are used to further investigate the critical elements contributing to the cognitive thresholds for each style. The results suggest that: (1) the cognitive thresholds of formal style do exist; (2) the range of cognitive thresholds of a formal style depends largely on its formal consistencies; and (3) the critical elements vary with different formal styles.

Keywords

formal style formal language form element cognitive thresholds Kansei engineering

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