Visual Expectation Effect on Tactile Texture: Toward Sensory Design Using Expectation Disconfirmation

A surface texture is a common design factor that affects a customer’s sensory perception of product quality. Customers perceive a surface quality using multiple sensory modalities, for example, vision and touch, and switch them through an interaction with a product, for example, a transition from vision to touch. Between such sensory modality transitions, human beings often predict subsequent modal perceptions using a prior modality, for example, predicting the tactile quality of a product from its appearance before actually touching it. We believe that a disconfirmation between prediction using a modality and an experience using another modality affects a perceived quality. In this paper, we propose a method to evaluate the quality of a surface texture with attention to the effects of a disconfirmation between a prior visual prediction and posterior tactual experience. To identify the textural factors contributing to such an effect, we conducted a sensory evaluation experiment with combinations of visual and tactile texture samples that were synthesized using a half-mirror. We demonstrate the appropriateness of the method with analysis of the results of an experiment using fourteen plastic texture samples having different textures that are commonly used in a product design.