The judgement of bodily attractiveness has been reported to be associated with the psychological process for detecting physiological health- and fertility- related features. Femininity of female gait is also related to its attractiveness. However, it is unclear whether the femininity is always attractive in female gait, and what physical characteristics are perceived as attractive and/or feminine. In this study, we aimed to understand the root of the attractiveness of human movement by examining the relationship between attractiveness and femininity in female gait. We first created 30-second gait animations by using 3D motion capture data of 10 female non-models and 7 female runway models, where they walked with barefoot or high heels. Then, 60 observers evaluated the attractiveness and femininity for each animation. We compared the scores of attractiveness (A-scores) and femininity (F-scores) between models and non-models, and we examined the factors related to the evaluation (A-scores and F-scores): walkers height, weight, BMI, and the characteristics of movements. As a result, both A-score and F-score were high for models’ heel gait. On the other hand, in the other conditions, there were two types of attractiveness-femininity relationship: linear relationship (high A-score and F-score, or low A-score and F-score) and unequal relationship (high F-score but low A-score). We also found that walkers‘ weight and lumbar bending motion were associated with the evaluation.

This study tries to investigate the visual perception of footwear with interchangeable uppers, by conducting semantic differential evaluations. Investigators designed six replaceable upper shoes based on casual footwear and able to convert to formal leather shoes. Young women's willingness to buy and fifteen Kansei adjective pairs with reference to the published results were used to evaluate twelve footwear design renderings, based on a seven-point Likert scale. Factor analyses were performed to analyze the differences and factors between two types (casual shoes and after shifting to formal leather shoes). In the factor analysis of footwear styles, five factors were identified for casual shoes: evaluation, attention, fashion, protection, and temperament; and five factors for formal leather shoes: attention, formality, fashion, weight, and protection. Fashion is a crucial factor that influences the willingness of young women to buy shoes, whether they are focusing on casual shoe uppers or dress leather uppers.

Keywords: footwear design, product emotion, customer perception, shoe upper replacement

The purpose of this study was to investigate the symmetry relationship between evaluation of smoothness and roughness of fabrics and the physical factors related to the evaluations, using a set of images obtained by photographing the surfaces of eight fabrics. These fabric surface images were created by setting the distance between the fabric and the camera at approximately 1 m and gradually reducing the distance for each of the eight fabrics. Based on these images, we conducted an experiment to evaluate the smoothness and roughness of fabrics on a seven-level unipolar scale. Results showed that the evaluation characteristics of fabric smoothness and roughness with consideration of the shooting distance of the fabric surface images differed for each fabric. Furthermore, analysis of the correlation between evaluation of smoothness and roughness of fabrics indicated that symmetry was not established between evaluation of smoothness and roughness of some fabrics.