Evaluating the effect of interactions between appearance-related product designs and facial characteristics on social affectivity

For products that can improve the appearance of the user, such as facial accessories, both the characteristics of the product user and design features must be considered in design evaluation. This paper proposes an experimental evaluation scheme that investigates the interactions between the design features of 3D eyeglasses frames and user facial characteristics. Face models of users containing both geometric and image data were constructed using 3D scanning. A face deformation method was developed to manipulate individual facial features without changing the other features on the face models. In the evaluation scheme, participants judged synthetic faces, which had varied eye distances and orientations and were wearing factorized eyeglasses frames, according to three affective measures related to the personality attributes of confidence, friendliness, and attractiveness. The experimental results show that changing certain design features influences the impressions of the face models with varied facial characteristics. The proposed scheme facilitates designing products that strengthen the impression of specific personality traits by accommodating individual differences in facial features. Relevance to industry: The evaluation scheme proposed in this paper facilitates designing products that strengthen the impression of specific personality traits by accommodating individual differences in facial features. By the scheme, companies can create products and services that satisfy individual customer requirements of personalized design.