Hui-Yun Yen’s research while affiliated with Chinese Culture University and other places

According to the National Development Council, Taiwan has one of the fastest growth rate of ageing and disabled population in the world. The two issues combined form a social problem that needs to be addressed immediately. Japan is the first country in Asia to reach “super-aged society”, and its emphasis on aged and disabled population’s social-wellness has often been the reference for other neighboring countries. Based on Japan’s Constitution, all citizens are entitled to the rights of freedom, dignity, and pursuit of well and healthy life. The founder of Yamano Beauty College, Aiko Yamano, incorporated cosmetology and gerontology in 1998 and published a new ideology called “Biyo-Fukushi”, or beauty-welfare. The core thinking, five principles of beauty, is manifested through an articulated home delivery system, “welfare beauty service”, which aims to increase people’s awareness and empathy towards the aged and disabled population, and achieve a common human desire of “ageing beautifully”. This study begins with a research on Japan’s historical development with social welfare, and later applies Lin’s “form and ritual” analytical system to evaluate the cultural and creative aspect of welfare beauty service. The goal of this study is to redefine Japan’s welfare beauty service to cater the ever-growing population of aged and disabled in Taiwan, and provide a solution to both long-term care and creative design market.

The purpose of this study is to explore the meaning of cultural objects and to extract their cultural features from Taiwanese aboriginal cultures. Atayal is a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines whose culture is disappearing rapidly due to a hundred years of colonization. The gungu, literally “weaving box” in the Atayal aboriginal language, is the subject of this study. Based on the previous studies, this study proposes a cultural ergonomic research model to provide designers with a valuable reference for designing a successful cross-cultural product as well as the interwoven experience of design and culture in the design process. This study attempts to illustrate how by enhancing the original meaning and images of Taiwan aboriginal culture features they may be transformed into modern products by taking advantage of new production technology and so fulfill the needs of the contemporary consumer market.

The cultural consumer market, characterized by the aesthetic economy, experiential economy, and emotional consumption, has matured with the advent of the Internet and communication technology. This study investigated the commercial design products by professional designers and university students to determine the influences of product emotional design dimensions on consumers’ purchase intention of and preference for those products. The differences between currently available design products in the consumer market and the assignments of product design courses were explored and analyzed to identify the prevailing principles of product design at present. In addition to being integrated into design education to cultivate design talents who satisfy market needs, these principles can serve as a reference for related industries in product design. This study reached two conclusions. First, the proposed measuring scale for product emotional design is proven to be feasible. Second, the emotional design of a product influences preference for the product, which subsequently enhances purchase intention of it.

The cultural and creative industries have received considerable global attention in recent years; in particular, the close relationship between these industries and design has been identified. Because mysterious and attractive East Asian aesthetic are a crucial contemporary style, this study examined a fashion exhibition held in the New York Metropolitan Museum, which entitled “China: Through the Looking Glass” and conducted a literature review, scale design, survey and data analysis, and factor analysis about the incorporation of cultural elements in fashion design. Subsequently, the perceptions of college students with various educational backgrounds on several selected exhibits were identified and analyzed. The results were revealed that: (1) the research scale can be used as a reference for related design teaching and in the appraisal of fashion products in the design industry; (2) cultural connotations are more notable in design than the technical aspects; (3) compared with students of other backgrounds, students with a background in fashion design emphasized more on the technical and professional aspects and expressed a preference for design pieces with experimental qualities, such as those made with stiff materials and having exaggerated styles, and neutral and neat straight lines.

Recently, product design in Taiwan has entered the original brand manufacturer era, which involves the evolution of Taiwan design development. Taiwan is eager to transform its economic development to “branding Taiwan.” Based on previous studies and experience in Taiwan, this study proposes a conceptual framework to study Taiwan design development, which has transitioned from “use” to “user,” “function” to “feeling,” and “hi-tech” to “hi-touch.” Hence, this study aimed to provide designers, companies, and organizations with a design strategy that is tailored to the current market. The results are presented herein to provide an interface for examining Taiwanese design development across cultures and to illustrate the relationship between local design and the global market in Taiwan’s economy, industry, and design development.

This study focused on undergraduates with varying reading habits and investigated their behavioral differences as well as the structural relationships between their attitude toward reading paper and digital catalogs, their digital usage behavior, and their paper and on-screen reading literacy. Fifty undergraduate students from Northern Taiwan comprised the sample population and were interviewed in depth. Comparative analysis was conducted on the behaviors between reading paper and digital catalogs. The results show that paper catalogs emphasized (a) richness of content messages, (b) viewing comfort of graphics editing, (c) convenience of storage, (d) connectivity of data search, and (e) influence of applied operations, whereas digital catalogs focused on (a) interactivity of media exchange, (b) immediacy of feedback sharing, (c) authenticity of audio–video transmission, (d) interoperability of service platform, and (e) potential of diverse internationality. Based on these qualities, the reading behaviors of undergraduate students who read using paper and digital catalogs were investigated and compared to determine the influence of paper and on-screen reading on the students. Finally, strategic recommendations for promoting digital catalogs are proposed through inductive analysis.

Manufacturers have developed increasingly mature production technologies in recent years, and their competitors have quickly generated comparable technologies. In addition to functional and engineering requisites, products incorporate affective attributes such as attractiveness, aesthetics, and creativity, which are key factors consumers seek when selecting brand products. Therefore, product designs must consider not only consumer needs but also consumer mentality and emotions when using the products. Thus, determining consumer needs based on the affective value of products can strengthen brand image and facilitates identification of product advantages. The five factors of the qualia program proposed by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration of the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs were modified to develop a product qualia factor scale. Brand affect and brand image scales were combined as research instruments for structural equation modeling analysis, which yielded the following results: (a) Product qualia had positive promoting effects on brand image. (b) Brand affect mediated the relationship between product qualia and brand image and qualia product promoted the spread of brand image through brand affect. (c) Through strengthened brand affect strategies, the effect of product qualia on brand image could be enhanced. In other words, consumers develop a positive affect toward a brand through their affect toward a product. During the process of brand image formation, product design can enhance brand image through brand affect. In the future, manufacturers designing new products can reference the product qualia factors to develop competitive products. Finally, we propose suggestions for relevant institutes and interested researchers.

The rise of aesthetic economics is remarkable over the past few years and it is also displays the culture and creative industry which would be outstanding in the world. The useful feature of the product is not the only reason to buy the product of the consumer. The interface of product aesthetics gives people a sense of beauty and impression; it also promotes people to consume and collect. However many products while similar in visual appearance, differ in their haptic characteristics affect people’s willingness to buy. Based on the above reasons, the trend of product design is consumer-oriented. This study analyzes the cognition difference of visual and imagined haptic inputs based on product texture. We choose tea cups with different textures be the stimulus samples in this experiment to investigate the participants’ psychological feelings. The purpose of this study is to discover the correspondence between product textures with consumers’ feel and generate specific guidelines for design in the future. There are four findings suggested by this paper. The first one is that a product with an attractive visual appearance is not necessarily pleasing to the touch. The second one is people view the products through visual and describe the product bias in emotional thinking. The third one is antonym adjectives of the popular products are less which conform of people with normal mental state. The fourth one is most of visual and haptic adjectives have commonality. Hopefully, industries and multi-cultural style of products will continue to support the future development and growth of aesthetic economics.

The experiential economy has entered our life affecting many products with cultural connotations and changing people’s lifestyles. It also displays cultural and creative industries that would be outstanding in the world. Chinese culture is the basis for the superior cultural and creative industries in Taiwan. Do the products evoke the sensation and emotion of consumers which designed in culture of value-added? Does the factor correlation between culture style and cultural-products? Are the business models of cultural and creative Industries and cultural-products of Qualia closely related? All of these questions are worthy of further exploration. Based on information analysis and literature review this study presented a framework applicable to any kind of Qualia products and culture and creative industries. The findings are as followed: (1) Cultural style is really enough to affect the design of cultural-products; (2) Successful products should conform to the five factors of Qualia: Attractiveness, Beauty, Creativity, Delicacy and Engineering; successful culture and creative industries should conform to the aesthetic economy business model. Taiwan has the advantage that value-added from Qualia to business model of cultural and creative industry is a presentation of the cultural connotation. Flourishing cultural and creative industries need a start in Taiwan. Marketing and brand building need to be extended by aesthetic from the economy business model to be outstanding in the global marketing in the future. This study includes the relation between cultural-products and consumers, Qualia products and business model exchange platform, international marketing operations and national support and counseling policies for a follow-up study issue.