Kansei Studies
Encyclopedia
Kansei
is a Japanese word that covers the meanings of sensitivity, sensibility, and intuition in English and is akin to the German concept of ÄsthetikAesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
. Researchers have proposed three major definitions for its applicability in psychology and design:
- In 1998, Prof. Akira Harada collected 60 definitions provided by researchers involved in the research related to Kansei, and analyzed the responses statistically. This arrived at five major dimensions of kansei:
- Kansei is a subjective and unexplainable function.
- Kansei, besides its innate nature, consists of the cognitive expression of acquired knowledge and experience.
- Kansei is the interaction of intuition and intelligent activity.
- Kansei is the ability of reacting and evaluating external features intuitively.
- Kansei is a mental function creating images.
- In 2005, Dr. Simon Schütte, working on Kansei EngineeringKansei EngineeringKansei Engineering is a method for translating feelings and impressions into product parameters, invented in the 1970s by Professor Mitsuo Nagamachi . Kansei Engineering can "measure" the feelings and shows the relationship to certain product properties...
, recalled Prof. Nagamachi's proposition and defined kansei as an individual subjective impression from a certain artifact, environment or situation using all the senses of sight, hearing, feeling, smell, taste, recognition and balance. - In 2005, Dr. Pierre Lévy proposed to describe kansei as a mental sense of subjectivity.