On the rise of China-chic, diverse trends have surfaced in the Hanfu development because of revivification and innovation. Understanding the perception and acceptance of potential users is vital for Hanfu development as it develops genuine confidence in their national identity and traditional culture. This study investigated and discussed the Kansei aspect of perception and acceptance of users in the appearance and structure of Hanfu. The study aims to grasp of characteristics of Kansei to identify the diverse style of Hanfu images to help designers understand the market needs of Hanfu products style and improve the attractiveness of a product. Two types of Hanfu were selected for evaluation. All data were gathered and analysed using semantic differential methods, descriptive statistics, factor analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis. Results revealed from two kinds of Hanfu: S01 can be categorised as practical and modern traditional Hanfu images, whereas S02 represented original and adequate fashionable Hanfu images. Finally, this paper is the first empirical research in Hanfu using the Kansei engineering method from users' perception and acceptance.

Although mental disorders have become a serious social problem, social stigma such as prejudice and misunderstanding inhibit adequate treatment for the patients. It is important to monitor our internal psychological and emotional states to prevent unconscious progression of mental disorders. This study aims to realize emotion-reacting garments and accessories in real-time, based on a passive and continuous emotion recognition system. Firstly, emotion-reacting fashion design is discussed for intelligent garments and accessories interacting with our body and mind. Next, this paper proposes a systematic design for the emotion-reacting garments and accessories, which uses emotion estimation analyzing facial expressions. To realize this system, a functionally extended collar made of transparent polycarbonate material is designed for integrating with the digital camera modules. Further, this paper discusses how to create physical stimulus on the emotion-reacting garments and accessories. Visual stimuli using RGB LEDs on the intelligent garments and accessories are designed for reflecting the emotions. In terms of audio stimuli, emotion-related keywords are used to select music played in the intelligent garments. Finally, prototypes reacting to emotions are demonstrated.

To retrieve multimodal candidate solutions for real users, we investigated the effectiveness of an interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) method with an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. Using three types of bees (i.e., employed, onlooker, and scout bees), the ABC algorithm retrieves various candidate solutions. Our previous study showed the effectiveness of the IEC with the ABC algorithm while looking at various practical IEC parameters from a numerical simulation using a pseudo-user that imitates user preferences. The results showed that the IEC with the ABC algorithm could retrieve more multimodal candidates than the interactive genetic algorithm (IGA), the previous chief method of IECs. However, we did not examine the effectiveness of the IEC with the ABC algorithm for real users. In this study, we performed experiments to examine the effectiveness of the IEC with the ABC algorithm for real users using running shoe designs as an evaluation object. The investigations compared multimodal candidate solutions using the IGA method as a comparison tool, retrieving the performance of both methods. To evaluate candidates, we employed user gaze information to reduce user evaluation loads. The results showed that the evaluation time for evaluating candidates of the IEC with the ABC algorithm was shorter than that of the IGA method. Moreover, we confirmed that the IEC with the ABC algorithm could retrieve more multimodal candidate solutions than the IGA method.

We investigated the effect of men’s dress shirts on impressions of wearers’ motivation and performance in the workplace, and appearance. A ready-made commercial shirt was used as a reference. Four types of shirts associated with high status (a high-priced ready-made shirt, a custom-made shirt, a high-end brand shirt, and a luxury brand shirt) were presented either alone or with neckties, on identical mannequins. Fifty-one Japanese university students in their 20s and 85 office workers in their 20s to 60s evaluated their impressions of the shirts. We provided no information about the shirts. Compared with the standard shirt, the evaluations of some shirts associated with high status were higher in both groups of participants. However, the presence of wrinkles was associated with lower evaluations, even for luxury brand shirts. Wearing a necktie improved participants’ evaluation of appearance and impression for all shirts. Overall, the results revealed that dress shirts affected participants’ impression of wearers’ motivation and performance.