Cross-Cultural Design. Methods, Tools and User Experience

The worldwide industries are pondering how to redefine the domain they belong to. The industry, by taking views from functional approach, has shifted from “What equipment is doing” to “What equipment is representing?” Therefore, from the status of the equipment itself, the instant visibility of the design, to the data of the first-draft, etc., all these elements are required to be united, communicated and innovated. The philosophy behind this study is “technology alignment, product innovation, and service integration.” It will introduce research and development applications such as interconnection with 3D software, etc., which means to apply the “Virtual-design System” as its conceptual foundation and to reach cross-domain applications in conventional industries with animation tools, such as iClone and Clo 3D. Hence, it allows free communication between science and technology, humans and machines, people and people. With the help of the cutting-edge equipment of digital process in production line, it innovates design process. To save time and cost of design and creation, by applying technology alignment and verification, the innovation process will become a complete medium for just-in-time customization. The design will no longer be fettered by complicated and tedious techniques. Designers can realise his original contents by utilize various materials and technology to express their ideas more effectively and efficiently. Further, the conclusion by the applications with Clo3D and iClone technology, accelerates design innovation mechanisms, speeds up production and delivery while instantly meets customer satisfaction with “Virtual communication production;” therefore, enhances the design services.

Existing product images are very important references for designing a new scheme. However, the designers have to collect and organize the product image data manually without proper tools, which may be time-consuming, inefficient and expensive. The rapid growth of product design has called for a smart system to assist designers with a quick start in designing a new product. Therefore, we propose an advanced designing assistant system (ADAS) to help the designers handle the large-volume product images more efficiently and create better design. The ADAS utilizes big data and artificial intelligence technology to achieve mass product data acquisition, analysis, retrieval, and design scheme generation. The ADAS utilizes builds a product image dataset firstly to decrease high cost of time and money in images collection task. Furthermore, based on this dataset, the ADAS develops three applications: (1) image retrieval and infringement analysis, (2) multi-label semantic annotation, (3) automatic design scheme generation. Experiments are conducted to validate the merits of the proposed system. And the results show that the ADAS could support designers with high quality from initial data collection to image retrieval, infringement analysis, semantic learning, and design scheme generation throughout the entire flow of the design task, greatly shortening the design period and improving efficiency.

This study is designed to investigate the application of enclothed cognition in apparel design based on the study that extended from clothing psychology. Using the potential of the systematic influence that clothes have on wearers’ psychological process, the purpose is to seek the relationship between clothing, psychology, and cognitive and behavioral response. The study explores the current influence and interpretation of clothing on psychology, and by taking the perspective of enclothed cognition to make further relevant acknowledged and developmental research. In addition, with the goal of implementing affecting factors for apparel design, and to refer to product design concept. This study verifies not just the visual impacts that clothing bring to the wearers, but also the spiritual satisfaction. Then, by the process of re-designing the clothing, this study attempts to arouse the public awareness and reinterpret the meaning for apparel design in a social and cultural aspect. The study integrates the literatures reviews on the application for clothing psychology, cultural product design model and emotional design for developing the research framework. Through case study of two apparel brands, the study analyses and explores the use of their current designing process in a literary framework. This study is attempted to provide a farsighted thinking method for the apparel design industry. The contribution of this study lies in: (1) Expanding the multi-directional plasticity development of apparel design and psychology at the academic and practical levels. (2) Through the research and exploration of this study, constructing the framework for apparel design that go beyond the function and usability benefit and also bring emotional benefit for the product as a reference in relevant creative fields.

Intelligent healthcare is an emerging interdisciplinary field combining medical field, network technology and interaction and service design (Joseph, Ahn, Kim et al. 2005; Ma, Wang, Zhou et al. 2018). It is also an innovation to the clinical treatment with which patients actively cooperate at a specific time and place. At present, in view of the physical health problems, researchers have put forward design methods of behavior intervention, behavior modification and behavior prevention, such as self-shaping design, temptation-resistant design, behavior-changing design and emotion design (DeVries and Chevaux 2014; Mo, Xu, Duan et al. 2016). However, the formation and transformation of healthy behaviors are a gradual process of mental cooperation. Persuasion theory suggests that the user can be induced and persuaded to develop or change behavior through design intervention, so as to achieve the goal of fitness and develop healthy behaviors (Rebecca and Tobias 2001; Stephen 2004; Chris 2006). To summarize, the structure of this paper is as follows. First, based on persuasion theory, the behavior model is investigated and the design factors of persuasion are put forward. Second, persuasive behavior components are studied to build a persuasion design model for intelligent health-care products, and persuasive design strategies are proposed in this part. Third, the above design factors and strategies are analyzed in combination with design cases. Finally, this paper will summarize and put forward the future research direction.

Design research and practice is increasingly expanding into new areas and merging with other disciplines, yet empirical research that investigates the interdisciplinary knowledge structure of these emerging areas remains scarce. This paper explores a novel front in design research inspired by Norman and Stappers’s 2015 article “DesignX: Complex Sociotechnical Systems.” The aim here is to depict the transient knowledge structure of an interdisciplinary domain started from inside design. The present empirical study uses mixed methods combining the VOSviewer knowledge mapping technique with text-based qualitative analysis. Results from these quantitative and qualitative methods frame rich insights into patterns of knowledge diffusion and integration in DesignX-related research. I argue that knowledge mapping techniques and qualitative analysis complement each other and can yield not only macro knowledge patterns about the examined area but more fine-grained meso- and micro-level knowledge of that area. The paper further reflects on the development of the DesignX approach.

Background: In recent years, the practice of co-design has gained proper attention for it can provide innovative approaches to complex societal problems through the participation of all stakeholders. Usually, designers focus on arranging methods and tools to support participants’ ideation and expression trying to overcome the barriers resulting from differences in background, skills, attitudes, and expertise (Sanders and Stappers 2012). However, acting as facilitators or team leaders without specific training on individual and group dynamics can lead to overlooking tacit or latent aspects that can eventually drag the team into tiresome quicksand during the sessions. Methods: interpretive concepts and theories describing individual transformation processes in the context of small groups are taken from relevant literature in the field of management development and applied psychology. Results: a light conceptual framework spots five critical areas that professional designers need to pay attention to when planning and conducting a co-design activity, if they want to keep the participation and involvement alive: (1) Motivation; (2) Focus; (3) Boundaries; (4) Rumination; (5) Transformation. Conclusion: An area for further research and theory ground for group-based co-design practice is outlined.

This study is concerned with the thinking process and the role of symbiosis in jewelry design. By investigating the connections between the natural and the artificial, this study builds a theoretical foundation for creating jewelry works based on imitation of the nature and for finding a balance between natural and artificial creations with the messages manifested in the nature. A qualitative approach combined with document analysis and case research method is adopted to develop the principles for creative design.In the development of the principles, this study proposes a Function Follows Form (FFF) model to overcome some of the drawbacks of design-led innovation. Under the natural guidance of objects and based on the concepts of FFF, this study develops the model and process of applying FFF and discusses the feasibility of applying it in jewelry design. The result can also be a reference for development of creative ideas. In addition, a declining industrial technique, electroforming, is utilized in the design of jewelry works to find the value co-creation possibilities with craft and an industrial process. This study attempts to develop an innovative design thinking process and evaluate the feasibility of this process by applying it in the design of jewelry works. Through mapping of the views of the creator and observers, this study further provides a new perspective on the relationship between the natural and the artificial in art creation, which can be an issue worth further investigation by future researchers.

The design of automotive human-machine interface has become an important topic in the field of automotive design. It is closely related to the styling design of automotive interiors, construction of information models, and process for user operation and interaction. It is also an important source of the user’s sense of driving, safety, and experience. The purpose of this paper is to establish an integrated design process for automotive human-machine interface that integrates hardware interface (styling design) with software interface (interaction design) in order to improve design efficiency and optimize design effects. The structure of the research is as follows: Firstly, logical cues for the integrated design process for automotive human-machine interface that integrate software and hardware were proposed through the analysis of research on and the development process of “software and hardware” products; secondly, the temporal structure of the integrated design process for automotive human-machine interface that integrates software with hardware was presented through the analysis of the design process of automotive styling and interaction; thirdly, the objects and tasks of the integrated design for automotive human-machine interface were provided through the analysis of the objects of automotive styling design and interaction design; fourthly, the integrated design process for automotive human-machine interface was constructed based on the logical cues, temporal structure, and objects of the design process, and the application practice of the design process was implemented with reference to design project cases from the self-developed “Human-Machine Interface for Electrical Vehicles” for mass production. The final sections discuss the contributions of this research and present the conclusions and future research directions.

Ma means emptiness, space, time or pause and its origin is correlated to the ideas of transience and incompleteness characteristic of Zen-Buddhist aesthetics. However, more than a concept, Ma is a modus operandi in Japanese daily life, which illustrates a place available for the materialization of potential events. It is an inter-space of connection through which people, actions, objects can pass and that, precisely for this reason, is the place of the present time. In this article, we will address the application of Ma as the guiding principle of the process of creation in the arts of the body. The body will be treated as a Ma-body, that is, a body-in-process, in constant movement and total availability for interaction with various media and technologies in the production of meaning and creation of different art objects.

The Chinese animation ‘Monkey King: Hero is Back’ had remarkable box office success and earned a good reputation for Chinese animated films, indicating a resurgence in Chinese animation, and that the successful marketing strategy is worth exploring. This study uses literature analysis and SWOT analysis to explore this animation’s marketing strategies. The purpose of this research is to: (1) dissect the contents of the marketing strategy of this animation; (2) explore the developing strategies of the sequel to this animation; (3) provide this animation’s developing strategies as reference for the development plan of Chinese animated films. Through SWOT analysis, this study pinpoints the developing strategies for Chinese animation. Firstly, animation designers ought to design the artwork incorporating elements of Chinese traditional culture and animation companies should specially train marketing personnel to promote the marketing model. Secondly, managers should improve the spin-off products, and the country vigorously support the animation industry. Thirdly, the film must meet the psychological needs of consumers and play a part in closing the distance between designers and audiences, and also help consumers choose conveniently. Fourthly, companies ought to introduce relevant personnel to improve the production technologies of animation films. Finally, designers should adopt innovative principles to retain their exquisite market advantages. The marketing ideas and promotion methods of Chinese animation films are still in their infancy and in the future, Chinese animation marketing must follow the principles combining with tradition and innovation.

We explore how cultural heritage can be preserved via human-computer interaction applications with a focus on food heritage in Taiwan. The contribution of this paper is its explanation of the existing and potential design space for HCI in the area of human-food interaction and is a step further in preserving the food culture in Taiwan. This paper represents a new step in this direction whereby all people can participate in the preservation prerevision of their own family recipes and the cultural meanings embodied in them by making a record of their daily meals. By highlighting the use of HCI’s irreplaceable role in the relationship features function, recording culture, and celebratory technology [31], we hope to encourage a more comprehensive research agenda within HCI to design technologies pertaining to the preservation of food heritage.

The purpose of this study is to explore the meaning of cultural objects and to extract their cultural features from Taiwanese aboriginal cultures. Atayal is a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines whose culture is disappearing rapidly due to a hundred years of colonization. The gungu, literally “weaving box” in the Atayal aboriginal language, is the subject of this study. Based on the previous studies, this study proposes a cultural ergonomic research model to provide designers with a valuable reference for designing a successful cross-cultural product as well as the interwoven experience of design and culture in the design process. This study attempts to illustrate how by enhancing the original meaning and images of Taiwan aboriginal culture features they may be transformed into modern products by taking advantage of new production technology and so fulfill the needs of the contemporary consumer market.

Recently, Taiwan’s community development has shifted toward emphasizing local cultural characteristics, where local handicrafts and agricultural products have been the primary drivers of the development of local specialty industries. From 1920s to 1940s, many residents of the Fuzhou area of Banqiao in what is now New Taipei City relied on the fragrant flower industry (i.e., growing gardenia, Gardenia jasminoides) as their primary source of income. This study used gardenia as a basis to transfer local culture into cultural codes before designing a series of gardenia-inspired cultural products. Finally, this study performed questionnaire analysis to determine perceptions of the cultural products; the results may serve as a reference for future design studies.

Taoyuan wood carving—a gem among intangible cultural heritages in Hunan Province—is deeply important to the region’s folk culture. However, it is one of the folk arts that faces an urgent risk of extinction due to a sharp decline in sales, lack of a new generation of “Taoyuan artisans,” and a decline in teaching skills to younger generations. Once it is lost, we will not be able to revive it. Hence, its study should facilitate its revitalization through social innovations and assist its adaptation to contemporary society, as well as integration into modern life. This article adopts the perspective of “productive preservation” in the study of Taoyuan wood carving, building a Taoyuan wood carving intangible cultural heritage knowledge platform through social innovation to digitalize and preserve intangible cultural heritage resources while also helping Taoyuan wood carving continue to shine in the modern commercial environment as a form of art by commercializing its achievements.

The main purpose of the research is to explore the audience’s cognition of the styles of Chinese landscape paintings through a case study of Chinese landscape paintings. Taking five landscape paintings of different styles created by the author at Hongcun Town of Huangshan as samples of the research, 127 respondents from the online community were invited to take part in the research. Eight styles were selected such as elegant and primitive, composed and powerful, ethereal, vigorous and smooth, wild and cold to describe the styles of Chinese landscape paintings and evaluate the ordinary audience’s cognition of these styles. The results indicate: 1. The twelve styles introduced in the ancient theory of painting can be used as evaluation criteria for the contemporary Chinese landscape paintings, which are positively related with the preference of the works. 2. The twelve styles show certain clustering effects, which can generally be divided into two categories. 3. The artistic conception of the works is highly related with the preference of the works.

The goal of UsabEU is to provide a starting point for usability evaluations with questionnaires in native or mother tongue. The platform supports online collaborative translation of usability questionnaires and their validation. Additionally, it serves as a repository for all validated questionnaires and a tool to perform statistically sound usability evaluations. The current proof-of-concept platform supports the translation and validation of the System Usability Scale questionnaire and statistical assistance for sample size estimation and data summarization.

The Tongji Design Week held since 2012 in Shanghai by Tongji University College of Design and Media, presents a classic case study of cross-cultural design. By analyzing the problems and challenges faced by this recurring design project, this paper examines the strategy and approaches taken by the design team of Tongji Design Week, and the specific design solutions, guidelines and rules in relation to the design strategy and concept set forth by the designer. This paper also examines how innovative contemporary communication design concepts and approaches could be combined with the needs of cross-cultural design to shape an up-to-date design language in a bilingual and cross-cultural context.

With the widespread emergence of “feed” in mobile Internet products, their competition for users and their usage time has become increasingly fierce, which makes improving the feed reading experience important. This research focuses on the news feed of Chinese news applications (apps) and attempts to provide an integrated picture of user experience with mobile news feed. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first stage, we explored users’ demands on mobile news feed and extracted important factors affecting users’ preference for products through in-depth interviews. Excluding the influence of news contents, the graphic layout and image quality, ancillary information, and template combination play important roles in users’ preference for products. On this basis, the template combination was further studied with an eye-tracking experiment. Results of eye-tracking data and subjective evaluation of six combinations show that templates and their combination influence users’ browsing behaviors and their subjective evaluation. It is a good choice to combine large-picture template with consecutive single-picture templates or consecutive three-picture ones since it can be well integrated. When consecutive three-picture templates work with one single-picture template, the score on users’ satisfaction of “good organization” is low, and the single-picture template is more likely to be ignored by the user, which greatly weakens the value of this piece of news. The research results provide design suggestions for the news feed of mobile news apps.

Gestures are used naturally in communication, and use with modern computer systems is becoming increasingly feasible and applicable for interaction. Analyzing how gesture interfaces are perceived in different parts of the world can help in understanding possible weak and strong points, allowing for different improvements to the interfaces. This study aims to analyze how different technological familiarization levels impacts the user experience of gestural interfaces. Our work describes the findings of an experiment that was replicated in two countries: Brazil and Japan. In each experiment, 20 subjects tested two applications; one had a mouse-based interface and the other a gesture-based interface. User experience was measured using questionnaires from AttrakDiff. Subjectivity and abstract concepts largely differed, but major agreement was found regarding room for improvement of the pragmatist quality of the gestural interface in order to be embraced by the average user.

In this paper, it mainly studied the satisfaction and mental comfort of people interacting with intelligent devices at different levels of proactivity. Three models were proposed corresponding to 3 levels of proactive interaction: L1 - “arouse and wait”, L2 - “arouse and output”, and L3 - “output directly”. The experiment was conducted with 6 short video sequences divided into two contexts where intelligent devices proactively initiated interaction with people at the three levels mentioned above. The short video sequences in each scenario were designed under the three models. In addition, the discovered subjective scores of participants’ satisfaction and comfort were presented, together with participants’ opinions on different levels of the devices’ proactive interaction. The analysis of the data revealed that people showed various levels of satisfaction and comfort towards the models under different contexts. Furthermore, this study also discussed the reasons behind the subjective scores and the benefits of the proactive interaction models. This research is aimed at offering some guidance in choosing interaction models to proactive interaction design.

This study investigated the effects of vibrotactile feedback on simulator sickness, human performance, and user satisfaction when wearing virtual reality glasses. A total of 36 participants were recruited and 30 of them finished the experiments. They were asked to wear virtual reality glasses to play a car race game with a vibrotactile vest and a vibrotactile gamepad. The vest and gamepad provided vibration feedback, which was turned on in one task and turned off in the other task. The performance was measured during the tasks and simulator sickness and satisfaction were measured through questionnaires. The results showed that the participants suffered severe simulator sickness without vibrotactile feedback and they were more satisfied with vibrotactile feedback. However, there was no significant difference observed in terms of performance. This study suggested that virtual reality glasses with vibrotactile feedback would improve the user experience. The result can help VR developers to choose proper vibrotactile feedback in VR applications.

In this research, three experiments were conducted to investigate the consistency of information processing in visual and auditory working memory tasks. On this basis, the comprehensive exploration and verification for the fatigue classification were carried out in the visual and auditory channels. It is shown from the experiments that: (1) Similar accuracy can be obtained in information processing of visual and auditory channels, however, processing time of auditory channel was longer than that of visual channel when the working memory capacity is 3 (for the N-back test); (2) the working memory task with the duration of 5 min, 30 min and 60 min can be utilized to induce low-level, medium-level and high-level fatigue respectively, which has been verified through the experiment III comprehensively; (3) there were some differences in information processing between visual channel and auditory channel, and it is more likely to accumulate fatigue for visual channel than that for auditory channel.

Since touchscreens were introduced into mobile devices, interaction directly on the touchscreen replaced interaction with the keyboard. In order to protect touchscreens and improve user experience, touchscreen protectors are widely used. This study selected three different designs of touchscreen protectors with three different levels of friction, and a touchscreen without a protector as a control group. The experiment was divided into two tasks, namely the moving task (including horizontal movement and vertical movement) and the circling tasks (including clockwise movement and counter-clockwise movement). User experience was measured through performance, questionnaires and psychophysiological techniques including electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements. Results reflected that a touchscreen without a protector was most suitable for gesture control to improve performance. Among various types of protectors, the protector with the same friction as a touchscreen, was more suitable to improve performance. Results suggested that protectors with excessive or too little friction cannot improve performance.

SERVQUAL is the best known and most commonly used scale measuring service quality in a wide variety of service environments. But several researchers have identified potential difficulties with the reliability and validity of the scale when it is used in a specific service environment. The purpose of this study is to review the scales measuring service quality in researches, comparing with SERVQUAL from the perspective of research method and dimensionality, and to investigate whether SERVQUAL are still suitable for measuring quality of typical service industries. We chose four well-studied service industries as key domains, and reviewed related researches about developing scales of measuring service quality in those four domains in the past 30 years. The four industries are retail banking, transportation, higher education and online shopping. Results showed that, even though the quality of most typical service industries cannot be completely measured by using SERVQUAL, the dimensionalities of scales in typical industries are associated to SERVQUAL’s five dimensions. SERVQUAL is still valuable for service quality scale development.

Internet banking is a new service related to both traditional retailing banking and the Internet. This study reviews the literatures on service quality measurement of Internet bank, with an emphasis on the methodological issues involved in developing measurement scales and issues related to the reliability and validity of service quality. We selected some studies on Internet bank service quality measurement instruments in recent five years from Web of Science, and subjected them to a thorough content analysis. The study identifies several conceptual and methodological limitations associated with developing Internet banking service quality measurement such as the lack of a rigorous validation process, the problematic sample size and composition, the focus on functional aspects, and the use of a data-driven approach. The study undertakes an elaborate literature review of research on the development of Internet bank scales, and summarizes guidelines for developed a reliable and valid scales measuring Internet banking service quality. The findings should be valuable to academics and practitioners alike.

Trust is a key component in developing successful interpersonal relationships. In this paper, we posit that the same is true for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), since human trust toward robots can facilitate HRI in terms of comfort and usability. We investigated the ability of a socially assistive robot to promote trust in the social relationship with its user by inducing self-disclosure of the user’s negative experiences and offering coping mechanisms to deal with these. To achieve this purpose, our system is equipped with deep learning techniques to detect the user’s negative facial expressions, which in turn can be used as cues for the robot to proactively induce self-disclosure. Once triggered, using a conversational model, the robot engages the user to determine the cause of their negative mood. Then, it infers the user’s internal feelings by applying Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference over a Bayesian Network on the user’s utterance. Combining the information gathered from the concept inferencing process and the self-disclosure content, the system is able to estimate a set of desires from the Bayesian Network. Experiments show that our proposed work can correctly infer the user’s feelings and desires from their utterances, as well as generate an appropriate response, resulting in the improvement of human’s trust toward the robot.

In this study, the effect of layout on user performance and subjective evaluation in an augmented-reality (AR) environment was investigated. A scenario where participants had to work on three windows simultaneously was used. Three basic layouts of these windows have been examined, i.e., a horizontal layout, a vertical layout, and a diagonal layout. Additionally, two experimental tasks had to be completed; one was a reading comprehension task requiring a low switching frequency (LSF), and the other was a classification task requiring a high switching frequency (HSF). The results revealed that first, participants performed best in the diagonal layout in the LSF task, whereas they performed best in the vertical layout in the HSF task. Second, no significant differences were found in the disorientation between different layouts. Third, participants were significantly less satisfied with the diagonal layout in the HSF task. In conclusion, a horizontal layout is first recommended for general tasks and a vertical layout is recommended for HSF tasks. The switching distance and switching path are two important factors to be considered in the layout design in an AR environment.

Understanding user requirements is a fundamental part of information systems design and is key to the success of interactive systems. Factors such as ease of use, cross-cultural interface design are crucial to building usable products that will gain high acceptance among users. Developing a utilizable mobile health application involves applying human-centered design methodologies. However, mHealth applications face usability challenges in terms of their usefulness due to lack of end user inclusion during the design process. In order to investigate usability impact on the end user, this paper examines the challenges and findings from Ghanaian migrant communities in the United States. This paper seeks to contribute to the requirement gathering process by highlighting the needs and noting the challenges in the collection of user requirement data needed to design and develop a targeted mHealth application. The results of gathered user requirements will contribute to informing the design of mobile health interventions tailored for Ghanaian migrants.

Tactile feedback has been widely used in smartphones in recent years. To explore the factors impacting the user experience of smartphone tactile feedback, the current study tested three aspects of these factors: the intensity of vibration (weak, moderate and strong), feedback times (once or twice) and the interval between two vibrations (100 ms, 230 ms, 370 ms and 500 ms). Twenty-six participants evaluated their tactile experience after finishing each touch task under different conditions on a model phone with three gestures. The results showed that satisfaction with tactile feedback increased along with the increasing intensity of vibration. However, such tactile satisfaction decreased as the interval between two vibrations increased. There was a significant interaction between the intensity and interval of vibrations. The results of the current study can provide guidance for product design in the related field of touchscreen products.

With the continuous development of the times, online merchandise sales have become one of the more important shopping channels for consumers. But for online sales, consumers can’t directly contact the goods, so online product display has an important impact on the shopping experience. In this study, eye tracking and subjective perception were used to explore the behavioral and perceived differences of consumers in different display modes. Under different display modes, consumers have different gaze duration, gaze trajectory and subjective perception. This study provides some suggestions and considerations for the follow-up study of online merchandise display.

Interactive public displays are often deemed to be more effective and engaging in delivering information to people. This paper presents three studies on directive displays − a type of display that rotates in response to a passerby’s movement direction and their effectiveness in drawing the attention of a single nearby passerby. The studies build progressively on each other, using three iterations of rotating directive displays, with evaluations of their performance compared with a static screen. Our results demonstrate a rotating screen that adapts to a passerby’s movement in real-time is more effective in both attracting passerby attention and improving screen reading efficiency. These results may provide a reference for future designs of public displays.

Taking the catering commercial graphic advertisement as the experimental material, this paper focuses on the Chinese and American subjects’ attention to the graphic, color, composition, text and those visual symbols’ categories in the advertisement. This study starts from the theory of cultural cognition and takes cultural cognitive differences as the premise. To explore the different ways in which the eastern and western communities deal with the visual information in commercial advertisements. Based on the principles of visual design in commercial advertising, this paper deconstructs the visual symbols in graphic advertising design and compares them one by one, so as to draw the difference of attention to visual symbols between Chinese and American subjects in commercial graphic advertising design. Finally, the evaluation results and relative weight values of various visual elements are obtained to form the priority results of attention of commercial graphic advertising design elements, so as to provide technical guidance for multinational enterprises and designers to design commercial advertisements more in line with consumer needs. The results of this experiment can be used for reference and inspiration in the application of the visual theory of cross-cultural cognition in the design of transnational advertisements.

With the tide of globalization getting ever higher and stronger, the need grows rapidly to travel aboard in order to obtain better health care. Hospital normally consists of many clinical departments and medical technology departments. It is difficult for patients to obtain medical information. Graphical symbols are helpful for patients who have limited ability to understand medical environment. In this study, 10 USA healthcare symbols from SEGD and 10 Chinese healthcare symbols from GB/T 10001.6 were conducted comprehension test. It was found that Chinese participants’ average comprehension level on Chinese healthcare symbols is higher than that of American healthcare symbols. The study showed that the understanding of words, characters, etc. is highly correlated with the cultural background. They are not applicable as main element of a public information symbol. Furthermore, the respondents with higher education level have less difficulty than those with lower education level in comprehending graphical symbols.

Mandala coloring has been receiving increasing attention in the literature and throughout popular culture. Previous research also indicated that high level of mindfulness may increase flow experience. The literature also suggests that teamwork may moderate the relationship between challenge and flow state, help subjects to overcome challenges and improve their flow state. Therefore based on the previous studies, our study wants to explore: (1) whether mandala coloring can improve mindfulness and flow; (2) what is the relationship between mindfulness and flow during the process of mandala coloring; and (3) whether teamwork can improve the state of flow in mandala coloring activity? Participants were 76 university students, divided into two groups: High-skill (n = 38) and low-skill (n = 38). The two groups performed three mandala coloring experiments in sequence: Structured mandala, Free mandala, and Cooperative mandala. Measurements of state mindfulness and state flow were taken for one pre-assessment of the whole experiment and three pre-assessments of each the three mandala activities. Results indicated that short-term mandala coloring exercises can’t improve mindfulness but can significantly improve the flow state. There is a significant positive relationship between mindfulness and some dimensions of flow (e.g., Concentration on task, Unambiguous feedback, Sense of control, Challenge-skill balance, and Autotelic experience). But a negative correlation was found between mindfulness and loss of self-consciousness dimension. Free mandala is challenging for participants in the low-skilled group, but teamwork in cooperative mandala can help them to overcome this challenge. The contribution of this research is to provide a reference for further understanding of the mechanisms that how mandala coloring can help improve subjects’ mental state and enhance positive psychology.

One of the main issues in the field of product aesthetics is the lack of consistency in the instruments and terms being used to assess it. Several scales have been used but with restricted validity and reliability; notwithstanding, the APID (Aesthetic Pleasure In Design) scale developed in English, as part of the UMA (Unified Model of Aesthetics) project, lacks these limitations. Our research, being in a Spanish speaking country, required the scale to be in Spanish to be comprised and applied to domestic respondents. The adaptation of psychometric instruments with conceptual and linguistic challenging constructs, often is difficult, as the items used to assess the construct do not always have a direct translation. Also, it is possible for the adapted version to require different items that were not considered in the original instrument in order to preserve the content’s equivalence according to the target culture. A qualitative-quantitative mixed approach is proposed in order to overcome these issues. The resulting instrument has been statistically tested, proving to be both valid and reliable for the measurement of aesthetic pleasure in design. The final scale consists of five items: bonito, hermoso, agradable, llamativo and me gusta. This paper aims to improve the understanding of how aesthetic pleasure is perceived and therefore expressed by the local respondents gaining insight into how this construct is mentally represented and categorized by the respondents. It also aims to illustrate how psychometric scales based on respondents’ vocabulary have a great potential as usability assessment instruments.

The cover designs of professional magazines can reflect trends in visual design. Based on the cover designs of 27 issues of “Industrial Design” magazine from 1967 to 1974, the purpose of this study is to study how people recognize cover designs which purposely reflect Taiwan’s design development and visual design trends. In particular the study explores the empirical selective preference of “Industrial Design” magazine’s cover design and how matches between the designer’s intension and user’s preference support the assumption that visual design trend exists in these cover designs. In this study, the stimulus materials are cover designs as an “encoding” process, and the subjects are viewers as a “decoding” process, both of which draw on the visual significance of the cover design in terms of “Creativity in Layout” and “Balance in Proportion.” Results showed that the selective preference of viewers differs with age, gender and education background. This study also purposes an approach of using MDS analysis to understand user perceptions and demonstrate that the results are worthy of further study.

The theoretical articulation of functionalism has been a dominant influence in modern industrial design. Though practical function of a product is always the industrial designer’s main concern, aesthetic effect is still a critical issue for the development of a new product. How a product was perceived as pleasurable? Jordan (1998) in a study titled “Human Factors for Pleasure in Product Use” concluded eight pleasure factors: (1) Security, (2) Confidence, (3) Pride, (4) Excitement, (5) Satisfaction, (6) Entertainment, (7) Freedom, and (8) Nostalgia. Through the quantitative investigation, this study intends to construct an accessible criticism model of cultural creative products based on the perspective of Jordan’s theory. The framework provides a foundation for design industries to establish design strategies.

Interventions to increase focus and decrease stress in the workplace are beginning to receive research attention. At the same time, extensive training in meditation techniques show promising results. This study aimed to investigate the effects of mindfulness meditation on stress, focus, affect, workload, behavior and performance in an information multitasking environment. Participants worked on a proofreading task while being allowed to switch to use Facebook. Stress and focus were measured with heart rate variability and EEG signals respectively. Self-reported affect and workload were measured by questionnaire. Behavior was measured with computer log activity and performance was measured with proofreading accuracy. The results suggest that mindfulness meditation can increase arousal level and decrease stress level after a single session. Positive affect tends to decline without any form of work break. However, a single engagement in meditation has limited impact on regulating people’s task switching behavior nor altering the focus level. Design implications for intervention tools are discussed.

This study investigated the effects of Mandala coloring on subjective well-being, mindfulness, and spirituality, and the relationship between mindfulness, spirituality and subjective well-being. Methods: Recruited 80 students from Chang gung university in Taiwan, measures of the three main variables were administered at pre–test and post-test. Results: Subjective well-being significantly increased (mean score of 3.96 and 4.67 at pre- and post-test, respectively), there is a positive correlation between mindfulness, spirituality and SWB. Spirituality would mediate the relationship between mindfulness and SWB. Conclusion: These results suggest that Mandala coloring can have a positive effect on the subjective well-being. However, further research concerning its effects on mindfulness, spirituality and SWB, as well as other psychological constructs, is warranted to better understand the effects of Mandala coloring.

We can often see a lot of art works set in our living environment, and the “Act on Setting of Public Art” has also been promulgated by government for more than 20 years. However, our people still have a smattering of knowledge about the integration of public art into living environment. Setting of public art is a kind of artistic activities that combine the public and the public living space. It can also allow people to walk out of the room and interact with the natural and human environment, increase human’s understanding of the urban environment, let art enter people’s life and practice the art of living. This research has studied the public art works on Xueqin Road near the New Taipei City Senior High School Affiliated to Taipei University in Sanxia District in Taiwan, which are originally expected to enhance the public’s appreciation of aesthetics, and also explored and tried to understand how the residents living here feel about the giant 12 artworks. It is hoped that the results of this research can be used as a reference for public art setting. This research has explored (1) whether there is a difference in the pleasure of the viewers’ perceptions of public art, and (2) whether the aesthetic experience have an impact on pleasant response of the public to public art. And it has invited students, teachers and parents from schools adjacent to the public art setting to answer the questionnaire as subjects, so as to understand the relationship between art and pleasure, enhance students’ theoretical knowledge of artistic appreciation and to realize the social function of effective art teaching in the cultural and creative industry development.

With the advent of the intelligent era, artificial intelligence has gradually played an important role in the generation of design. That’s why it is particularly essential that how to use artificial intelligence to make a design output. This study aims to explore the rules of machine-generated graphic design. Take the intelligently generated film poster as an example, designers use professional knowledge to train the machine for multiple rounds and evaluate the machine-generated results. Then explore and improve the machine intelligently generated film poster for multiple rounds to let the machine generate movie posters which fit the public’s aesthetic. In the end, through the evolution of designers, we determined the measurement dimension of aesthetic. We also summarized several important rules for machine-generated movie posters and design, as well as provided reference for machine-generated graphic design and human-machine cooperation design in the future.

Kawaii has drawn the attention of people both in and out of Japan. In order to investigate Kawaii semantics and find typical Kawaii design features, we conducted a survey of Kawaii semantics and an experiment to verify the findings of the survey. The survey finds Kawaii semantics from visual, acoustic, tactile, movement and emotional aspects. Explorative factor analysis is conducted to find typical factors and to establish a six-dimensional model of Kawaii semantics. The experiment is based on the survey and intends to examine the effects of Kawaii factors on Kawaii design of furniture, household appliances and robots. The results indicate that roundness is effective to make all three products Kawaii. Interaction effects between factors are significant, indicating that Kawaii is integrated but not simply aggregated by Kawaii features. Kawaii design guidelines are put forward from the results to improve design efficiency and improve user experience in Kawaii design in the future. This research for the first time fuses Kawaii features from multiple aspects and provides a structural foundation for further study of Kawaii design.

The art participation of the public has been declining year by year, and art has become more and more difficult to understand. However, the complex pressure of modern life has made people’s spiritual needs getting urgent. How to let art re-enter into the daily life of the public is a problem that art workers need to face. Interactive art seems to be a good medium to attract the public to participate in art activities, but the impact of interactivity on the audience’s aesthetic cognition remains to be explored. This study takes the art work “Iron Bird” as the object, uses Norman’s emotional design theory, and uses questionnaires to understand the audience’s perception situation of “iron bird” from the three levels of “instinct”, “behavior” and “reflection”, also to explore the impact of interaction on the aesthetic perception of art. The research shows that: 1. The influence of interaction on cognition is mainly reflected in the instinct level and behavior level. 2. Compared with pleasure, the influence of interaction on cognition is less and weaker. 3. Interactivity has no significant effect on the preference. 4. Interaction can significantly improve viewer’s sense of pleasure. 5. Interaction can enhance the viewer’s rational cognition and make them judge in a more objective way. The sense of pleasure can influence the viewer’s perceptual cognition and subjective recognition.