Perception and fabrics: a preliminary investigation about the responses patterns by the stimulation of vision and touch

During the interaction of the individuals with the products, the sensorial channels are activated and begin to receive various information. In the Design exercise, the properties of the materials are responsible for giving the objects personality. In the case of fashion product, the aesthetic features, as well as the physical and mechanical characteristics of the fabrics promote varied perceptions that generate subjective and affective responses in the individual. In this sense, the present study presents a preliminary investigation about the responses patterns obtained through the simulation of two sensorial channels – vision and touch - in front of some varied fabrics. For this purpose, five different samples of fabric were evaluated through a semantic scale completed with bipolar adjectives to identify the response patterns. Comparing the individual perceptual of each fabric, it was observed that there were no substantial differences between the responses obtained by the different sensory channels. Fabrics with irregular surface, grainy and a voluminous fit, such as crepe, presented more negative perceptual responses, such as discomfort, hardness, and synthetic. It is noted that aesthetic qualities, such as repulsiveness, simplicity, ugly and coarse were more accentuated when considered the perception through vision.