Affective surface engineering- using soft and hard metrology to measure the Sensation and perception in surface properties

New surface treatments, novel material developments, and improved quality control procedures and advanced metrology instrumentation create a possibility to further develop competitiveness by the selection of “optimal” surface features”, to a product. The customers first apprehension of a product and the creation of desire is a very complex, but tempting process to learn more about. The interaction between the added quantitative-and the qualitative direct impressions with the customers known and unknown functional demands, social background, and expectations results in sensation and perception, partly possible to quantify and to great extent impossible to pin-down as numbers. Customer sensation and perception are much about psychological factors. There has been a strong industrial-and academic need and interest for methods and tools to quantify and linking product properties to the human response but a lack of studies of the impact of surfaces. This paper aims to introduce a novel approach to develop and join a human sensoric inspired metrology frame-work with qualitative gradings of apprehended impressions of products with varying surface properties. The aim is to establish the metrology framework to link measurable-and unmeasurable impressions of product surfaces to customer FEELING as exemplified by a set of industrial applications. In conclusions of the study, future research in Soft metrology is proposed to allow understanding and modelling of product perception and sensations in combination with a development of the Kansei Surface Engineering methodology and software tools.