Mere manipulation of the visual appearance in otherwise two The differences in the perception of comfort brought about by the This paper describes an experimental study to explore Unlike discomfort, the concept ofĬomfort is regarded a highly subjective and multi-faceted On the other hand, the Comfort perception was characterised by seating with a separate headrest and rounded seat back/cushion shapes.įor seat design processes, the method enables a practical way to identify elements conveying Sporty, Comfortable and Luxurious perception.Ībstract Automotive seat comfort has become a major aspect inĭifferentiation and customisation amongst competitors in a highly It was found that for the Sporty perception the integrated headrest design and angular shapes were key.
The results indicated that the perceived Sporty, Luxurious and Comfortable were descriptor items that significantly differentiated seats with certain design attributes. Participants were asked to categorize the different seat designs varying from 1: least, to 9: most for all three descriptors.The resulting data was analyzed using hierarchical clustering analysis. Images from 38 automotive production seats were used in an image-based card sorting app (qCard) with a total of 24 participants. The significance of the descriptors Sporty, Luxurious and Comfortable and the associated visual design attributes was of interest. To identify the effects of the appearance of production automotive seats, based on the hypothesis that visual design differentiations are affective in creating comfort expectations. The role of appearance of automotive seats on perceived comfort and comfort expectancy has been acknowledged in previous research but it has not been investigated in depth. Significant main effects as a function of design on expected automotive seat comfort and emotional response were found. The cumulative heat map plots across the different designs showed that a considerable amount of visual attention was focused on the shoulder support and the lumbar upper back support areas. The seats were evaluated using a combination of methods and measures: gaze behaviour, subjective emotional responses and mark-up by participants on images followed by card sorting.
Participants were asked to evaluate in terms of comfort. Twenty seven participants were asked to evaluate 15 automotive seat designs. Two hypothesis were tested with a mixed methods approach 1) that automotive seats with triangular integrated headrests and angular shape characteristics lead to a holistic evaluation strategy for consumers, and 2) for seats that displayed padded areas which were deemed more comfortable would afford more localised attention hotspots. The study built on previous work and earlier findings where it asks the question which seating design elements in particular are effective in differentiating expected automotive seating comfort.
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