Kansei color concepts for e-commerce website design – a case study using designerwear websites

Abstract

Kansei Engineering (KE) is an affective engineering methodology that focuses on consumer emotions in conjunction with product features where they are translated into design elements. KE can be used to improve the user's emotions and feelings towards products. This concept can be applied in terms of any type of product including web-based products. Taken together, the study focused on how to use the color concepts to improve user perception of web interfaces using Kansei Engineering in the context of e-commerce designerwear websites. Designerwear websites were selected as the product property space of the case study. Then the design elements that can be identified in the website UIs were identified which include colors, layout, typography, etc. Based on a thorough review of literature, the importance of color concepts as a design element was identified among others and selected for further analysis. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the psychological measurements of the Kansei Factors. The measurements were collected using a semantic differential scale. To identify the factors and the prominent Kansei words, data analyses were done employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Based on the results of the PCA, important color concept guidelines have been introduced which could be successfully applied in future website designs.