Wooden furniture design based on physiological-psychological measurement technology and Kansei engineering: Taking Ming-style chair as an example

Psychological and physiological cognitive measurements were combined with Kansei engineering theory to study the shape of the traditional Chinese official-hat chair, a kind of Ming-style chairs, while investigating people’s perceptual cognitive process. This work employed focus groups to obtain 5 groups of representative words and 22 typical samples for evaluation experiments. After data preprocessing, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to extract three main components: “Concise-Ornate”, “Soft-Strong”, and “Elegant-Vulgar”. In terms of component weight calculation, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was initially used to calculate the subjective cognitive weight of different components, and then eye-tracking technology was used to assist in calculating the physiological cognitive weight. Finally, combining the subjective and objective weights, the weights of the components were determined as: backrest (41.02%) > stretcher (18.29%) > handrail (11.64%) > top rail (11.14%) > outside stick (8.64%) > inside stick (5.32%) > foot rail (3.95%). The four main components—backrest, stretcher, handrail, and top rail—along with perceptual image evaluations, were selected to establish a multivariate linear regression equation, thereby constructing a mathematical mapping relationship between perceptual image and main design elements. This provides theoretical support for designers in creating different perceptual images.