On innovative design of traditional Chinese patterns based on aesthetic experience to product features space mapping

Abstract

Consumers’ different aesthetic experience affects their choice of products, so how to construct product design features space based on consumers’ aesthetic experience, especially how to integrate traditional cultural elements into modern product design, has become one of the most effective ways to improve product design quality.Taking the innovative design of traditional Chinese Miao’s patterns on canvas bags as an example, this paper constructs the mapping relationship between consumers’ aesthetic experience and product feature space on the basis of analyzing the feature elements of Chinese Miao traditional patterns “Jiuqu River flower”, as pronounced in Chinese.Using word cloud semantic tool, this paper analyzes the interview results of three consumer groups, namely, fashion youth, intellectuals and housewives, and obtains the aesthetic expression of three consumer groups on the innovative design of traditional patterns on canvas bags. Based on this, the feature elements of traditional pattern extraction and redesign of “Jiuqujiang River Flower” are used. Three canvas bag styles containing traditional cultural elements were constructed for different perceptual word pairs. Finally, the 7-level semantic difference quantization method of Kansei Engineering was used to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of the spatial mapping method of aesthetic experience and product features. The final results showed that the modern product quality of creative design can be effectively improved by integrating with the traditional Chinese cultural elements, on the basis of making the mapping from aesthetic experience to product feature space, so that to meet the consumers’ aesthetic needs to the most.

Keywords:

• aesthetic experience
• features space
• mapping
• traditional pattern
• innovative design

1. Introduction

With the social and economic development, consumers are paying more and more attention to the cultural connotation contained in the product while pursuing the new material product.The traditional patterns and symbols, with their profound national cultural heritage and unique beauty of historical precipitation, are paid more attention to by modern designers at the beginning of design. Therefore, how to effectively integrate traditional cultural elements into modern product design has become an urgent issue for designer. In the specific design process, taking into account the aesthetic needs of modern consumers, traditional Chinese cultural elements such as Miao ethnic group’s pattern can not simply be copied to modern product design, because with the change of modern consumption concept, consumers’ expectations of products are no longer limited to the transmission of traditional cultural symbols or bearing traditional culture, but the pursuit of modern products in the integration of modern fashion life at the same time, But also for consumers to bring full cultural connotation experience (Christine & Herr, 2002). This means that while maintaining its cultural background and value, traditional art should be integrated into modern fashion life to meet the needs and aesthetic standards of modern society. In modern product design, traditional cultural elements should be skillfully used to attract new consumers with more modern forms and contents, help them get full cultural connotation experience, and improve the design quality, especially showing great concern about the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture, so as to meet the diversified needs of modern consumers. But how to extract the traditional Chinese cultural elements and use them properly in the products design, so as to fit for the modern consumers’ esthetic taste, which required us to have further study.This paper intends to start from the relationship between consumers’ aesthetic experience and product features space, analyze the mapping relationship between them, take the extraction and reconstruction of the traditional Chinese Miao ethnic group’s pattern of “Jiuqu Jianghe”, as an example, select a fashion canvas bag as the object of innovative design, and study the mapping relationship between consumers’ aesthetic experience and product features space constructed. To realize the design of fashion canvas bags with traditional pattern elements and symbols for different consumer groups, and explore how the design method from consumer aesthetic experience to product feature mapping drives product innovative design.

2. Literature review

With the continuous improvement of people’s material living standards, consumers’ aesthetic demands and integrity requirements for products are upgrading, and consumers begin to choose diversified lifestyles with their preferred material life outlook, gradually turning the consumption process into a self-realization process of consumers (Nijs, 2015). At the same time, the homogenization of core attributes (such as quality and function) of modern products leads product designers to pay more and more attention to some non-tangible features of products to provide consumers with the hedonistic value of aesthetic appreciation. That is, aesthetic experience has become a mainstream design trend today, so design has shifted from its initial focus on tangible entity to the intangible value of the product (Leder et al., 2004). Integrating traditional cultural elements into modern product design has become an important way to enhance the intangible value of products (Thorpe & Gamman, 2011).

2.1. Aesthetic experience

Aesthetic experience is consumers’ examination, appreciation and understanding of specific products, and products with aesthetic appeal will receive positive brand evaluation from consumers (Kreuzbauer & Malter, 2005). If two products are similar in function and price, then consumers will prefer the aesthetically attractive product that brings them pleasure (Seifert, 2011). Research shows that aesthetic experience plays an important role in consumers’ perception of the usability (Li et al., 2013). From the perspective of signal theory, when some consumers feel puzzled or uncertain about the product, their aesthetic experience will promote their understanding. On the other hand, consumers’ choice of products are also associated with the adaptability, which not only means the attributes of the product itself, but also indicates the environment and their own cultural background, so those products that have the inherent attributes, such as the context and the cultural background of the consumers and other factors related to it, and the products are more likely to be selected because they conform to consumers’ preferences (Cox & Cox, 2002). At the same time, the research also found that before consumers actually use the product, aesthetic experience has a greater impact on consumers’ usability, that is, the improvement of the appearance of the product will help increase its possibility of being selected and used (de Tommaso et al., 2008). However, some other researchers believe that after the actual use of a product, the usability of aesthetic experience for consumers depends on consumers’ actual use experience, and there is no correlation with aesthetic experience. Therefore, when consumers choose a product, the appearance design of it is very important (Hagtvedt & Patrick, 2008). Aiming at the difference of consumers’ aesthetic experience, Marcus (2000) found that Asians usually prefer colorful interfaces, while most Westerners prefer simplicity. For Asians, beautiful appearance design may be perceived as information overload in Westerners’ aesthetic concept. KATHARINA REINECKE et al. selected 41 consumers from different cultural backgrounds as investigation objects, and found that aesthetic experience adapted to consumers’ cultural preferences, which can greatly increase consumers’ understanding of the usability (Reinecke & Bernstein, 2011). The above studies further verify that consumers’ aesthetic experience is closely related to their cultural background, and the symbolic connotations of products in different cultural backgrounds affect consumers’ aesthetic experience of product design (Fiore & Kimle, 1997).

2.2. Participatory design

As a design method adopted to stimulate the dialogue between products and consumers, participatory design is different from focusing on the realization of functions, generating profits and improving beauty and other design goals. Instead, it regards design as an activity of high importance and influence on the cultural level. Designers and consumers are involved in various ways to promote a deep understanding of each other. As stated by Johnson (1998), participatory design is a design method characterized by consumer participation (Johnson, 1998, and Spinuzzi (2002) defines participatory design as a methodology, believing that the method means effective interaction with consumers (Spinuzzi, 2002). To fully understand the real needs of consumers, Bjorgvinsson et al. (2010) emphasize that the characteristics of participatory design do not lie in the participatory activities themselves, but the mechanisms used, the effects produced, and the methods adopted to produce these effects (Bjorgvinsson et al., 2010). According to the Stanford d.school team’s five stages of design thinking: empathy, definition, conception, prototyping, and testing, the overall process of participatory design can be better organized (Rashdan, 2022). In the early stage of exploration, designers need to empathize with users and define the problem, in the discovery stage, various methods need to be used to conceive the problem, and in the prototype stage, designers and users need to make prototypes together and test repeatedly for verification. However, from the perspective of participatory design behavior mode, whether in the support mode(consumers are the subject of research and designers just play an auxiliary role), or in the cooperative mode(both the consumers and designers are cooperators to overcome the difficulties in the process of product design). Although different behavior modes and methods have different effects on the promotion of design, In addition, three complementary methods of “qualitative, mixed and quantitative” are adopted for comprehensive data collection. In the form of specific methods, there are also various forms, including 5 observation methods, 9 discussion methods, 11 written methods, 3 visual methods and 23 interactive methods (Kang & Wenghao, 2023) . However, how to effectively map the inner needs of consumers to the specific features of products, the relevant research needs to be further pushed in-depth.

2.3. Traditional pattern and modern design

In modern cultural life, cultural consumption is becoming more and more important. Its essence is an economic activity through which consumers consume spiritual wealth in non-material or material form provided by others or society. Different cultural consumption has different needs for traditional culture, and in product design, those products closely related to traditional culture are more and more favored by consumers by effectively integrating traditional patterns into their design (Li, 2023). At the same time, in order to cater to this cultural consumption, many fashion products (T-shirts, shopping bags, etc.) also integrate traditional pattern elements and symbols into product design, which enriches the cultural connotation of products while inheriting traditional culture. In fact, traditional national patterns contain profound cultural deposits of the whole nation, and their artistic features are derived from the philosophical thought of “harmony between nature and man” in traditional Chinese culture, and have a sense of rhythm and symmetrical balance in the combination of static and dynamic forms (Ze-Ping & Kun-Xian, 2023). Traditional Chinese patterns include geometric patterns, animal patterns, plant patterns, human patterns and text patterns (Bigeng & Xingye, 2022).These traditional patterns contain special cultural connotations, and their external form beauty has been the results of continuously evolution for a long time, which fully reflects the unique aesthetics of traditional Miao ethnic groups.In order to meet the aesthetic needs of modern consumers and stimulate consumer emotional identification, designers need to conduct in-depth analysis of the target group of products, give products more cultural value, introduce traditional patterns in modern product design, and realize the inheritance and innovation of traditional cultural elements (Xinyu, 2021). However, different forms of ethnic traditional patterns formed under different cultural backgrounds need to use new design methods and ethnic traditional patterns for integration, so that the pattern in the new design to maintain its original charm at the same time, but also meet the aesthetic needs of modern people, so how to give traditional patterns new life vitality, is one of the problems that modern designer needs to be thought about and solved.

3. The mapping relationship between consumer aesthetic experience and product features space

As a visual symbol with specific connotation, traditional pattern carries unique artistic appeal. Although people’s worship of traditional patterns has been weakened in modern social life, its customary symbolic significance and the unique artistic beauty that has been accumulated for thousands of years still attract more and more designers to explore how to skillfully use national traditional patterns in modern product design and highlight the design soul of national characteristics. In particular, in the design of various textile fabrics, which are highly sought after by consumers, traditional national patterns are integrated, and consumers’ sensitivity to aesthetic elements such as color and texture is emphasized. Because what drives consumers’ purchasing behavior is aesthetics, and the decisive factor of aesthetic driving not only depends on the cultural background of consumers, but also depends on whether consumers can quickly and accurately perceive the cultural connotation of different design elements (McKinney, 2014), Therefore, how to effectively perceive consumers’ aesthetic needs has become one of the key elements in product design.

From the perspective of product design, the main elements of product design are function, material, specifications and structure, etc. Although some changes in product appearance image will not cause greater cost changes, it will lead to changes in the added value of the product. This change is the aesthetic value experience in play. According to the survey found that in the case of the same product function, the aesthetic appearance of the product has become an important concern factor for consumers to buy the product, which directly determines the consumer’s purchase decision, and the aesthetic evaluation of the product is closely related to the aesthetic preferences of consumers (Patrick & Peracchio, 2010). Therefore, if you can design the appearance form of the product according to the aesthetic needs and aesthetic trends of consumers, you can meet the aesthetic needs of consumers well. Many fashion product appearance design through the introduction of traditional symbolic elements to adapt to the current simple and cultural connotation of the aesthetic needs, is becoming the current fashion design trend. In fact, consumers’ aesthetic experience is often the decisive factor leading to the final purchase of a product after comparing it in terms of function, quality and price (Schellekens, 2022).

Research shows that the most direct perception of consumers’ aesthetic experience is the appearance of the product, which transmits some explicit and invisible information between the product and the consumer, and establishes effective communication between the consumer and the products (Schwarzfischer, 2022). This means that product design needs to give priority to some representative forms and symbols that are closely related to the product itself. On the basis of a deep understanding of the spiritual connotation of traditional cultural elements, through extraction, simplification, abstraction, deformation and other design means, recombination forms new design element symbols, and then design products that meet the aesthetic experience of modern consumers.

3.1. Consumer aesthetic experience

Aesthetic experience refers to the spiritual transcendence and life perception achieved by people in the process of feeling and debating the aesthetic object, which belongs to the peak experience of strong personality and soul. Consumer aesthetic experience refers to the consumers received various information of the product through the senses, and then having the good feeling or association of the product. One of the important factors affecting consumers’ aesthetic experience is the cultural attribute of product design (Robins, 2015). Consumers with different cultural backgrounds have different feelings towards beauty, and this difference further affects consumers’ aesthetic experience of purchased products, which is highlighted by consumers’ aesthetic feelings towards product appearance. This requires designers in the process of product design, not only need to understand and master the function and attributes of the product, but also to combine the characteristics of the product itself, pay attention to the cultural background of consumers (Ninghui & Lu, 2014). The survey found that the use of graphics and colors in the design have an impact on consumers’ aesthetic experience, and any design element may be related to consumers’ different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is very important for product designers to truly and accurately grasp consumers’ aesthetic experience.

One of the effective ways to learn about consumers’ aesthetic experience in product design is perceptual engineering, that is, through the combination of qualitative reasoning and quantitative analysis, explore the relationship between “human” sensibility and “object” design features, and analyze the relationship between human sensibility and preferences as well as the concerned objects. Consumers’ feelings or images can be effectively combined with product design elements (Weiwei, 2017). The essence of perceptual engineering is to apply mathematical analysis to study social science, and use rational analysis tools to quantitatively express perceptual problems, so as to construct the logical relationship between product and consumer (Jinliang et al., 2019). The logical relationship is shown as the Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Logical relationship between product and consumer experience.

When using Kansei engineering to make aesthetic analysis of products, consumers’ sensibility to products has not only linear features, but also non-linear features, such as length design elements in geometric shape products, whose length changes lead to the product’s “big-small” linear sensibility. However, the statistical characteristics of quantitative data in the evaluation of “beauty-unbeauty” are nonlinear, and it is impossible to measure the difference between beauty-unbeauty with direct quantitative data. Such fuzzy feature variables can be distinguished by quantitative classification method. Based on the normal distribution hypothesis, Kansei Engineering adopts the quantitative method to quantify semantic differences. Thus, the nonlinear definition of consumers’ aesthetic perception of products can be realized (Liu et al., 2012).

3.2. From consumers’ aesthetic experience to product features space

For modern consumers, aesthetic taste is an important driving force of consumer purchasing behavior. As shown in Figure 1 above, direct perception that affects consumers’ aesthetic experience is a product design element. Vision, as the sensory organ with the largest amount of information acquired, has the most significant impact on consumers’ purchasing behavior. Paying attention to consumers’ reaction to the visual beauty of products can improve the expressive force of product design and enhance consumers’ pleasure of products, while consumers’ aesthetic experience of products can be obtained through consumers’ visual beauty (Lingyu et al., 2021). The reason is that consumers’ aesthetic experience is a high-level cognitive process. Through the interaction of cognition, imagination and feeling in aesthetic experience, consumers can fully feel the internal beauty of products. Compared with the simplicity of consumer perception, aesthetic experience is more sensory and cognitive in thinking and imagination, and aesthetic experience is the result of the synergy of imagination, cognition and perception. The influence of product design and behavior perception on people’s aesthetic experience is mainly through people’s vision, through which people get about 80% ~ 90% of information from the outside world. Therefore, visual aesthetic experience contributes to inspiring, expressive and pleasing product design to a large extent (Tingxin, 2021). The process of consumers’ aesthetic experience of products is shown as the Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. Consumers’ aesthetic experience process of products.

Based on Figure 2 above, aesthetic activities in consumers’ aesthetic experience can be further divided into two processes of low level and high level (Li, 2001). Complexity evaluation belongs to low level aesthetic experience, while aesthetic impression evaluation belongs to high level aesthetic experience. In combination with the semantic differences of Kansei Engineering, it is found that subjects are more focused on the details or salient points of products during high-level aesthetic activities. The distribution of concerns is relatively dense, and the direction of light and contrast of products will have an impact on them. On the other hand, in low-level aesthetic activities, subjects pay more attention to the characteristics of product lines, color changes and composition. However, for the same product, due to the different aesthetic experience of consumers, consumers’ aesthetic space is also different. This paper may wish to define the aesthetic space as$K_i$(K is the aesthetic space, i is different consumers), and different consumers’ aesthetic space $K_i$corresponds to different product features$F_{i,K_j}$(F is the product feature element, j is different feature). The same feature variables are extracted from each aesthetic space to form a common product features space$\{F_1,F_2,\cdots ,F_j\}$ from $\{F_{1,K_1},F_{2,K_1},\cdots ,F_{n,K_1}\}$,$\{F_{1,K_2},F_{2,K_2},\cdots ,F_{m,K_2}\}$, to $\{F_{1,K_{\mathrm{i}}},F_{2,K_{\mathrm{i}}},\cdots ,F_{m,K_{\mathrm{i}}}\}$. This features space belongs to the common features space that meets the aesthetics of different consumers, and its logical process is shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Aesthetic experience to product features space.

According to Figure 3 above, the construction of consumers’ aesthetic space needs to accurately obtain the effective aesthetic response of different consumers to the same product. Only by constructing different consumers’ aesthetic space can a common product features space be obtained. If this features space conforms to the product features space of most similar consumers’ aesthetic experience, The products designed in this way can satisfy the aesthetic experience of such consumers to the greatest extent.

3.3. The product features space construction of traditional patterns

Canvas bags are favored by many consumers because of its many advantages,such as light, durable, environmental protection, beautiful, fashion and so on, and the demand for canvas bags has been growing, according to the 2023–2029 China canvas bag market research survey and industry development trend research online report. In China, the profit of the canvas bag industry reached 135 billion yuan in 2018, and increased 6.5% to the last year. From the classification of the canvas bags designing of the patterns, which can be roughly divided into monochrome, cartoon, merchant brand and embodied traditional and creative cultural(as shown in Figure 4). The cartoon canvas bag is designed with various cartoon patterns on the surface of the canvas bag, and the merchant brand canvas bag is designed with merchant trademark patterns on the canvas bag for commercial promotion. Embodied traditional cultural and creative canvas bag is to design various cultural creative patterns on the canvas bag to arouse the consumers’ attention to the combination of the traditional culture and the new esthetic needs in the modern society.

Figure 4. Different creative design of canvas bag.

With the improvement of people’s living standard, people all over the world pay more and more attention to the inheritance and innovation of their own traditional culture. One aspect of traditional culture inheritance and innovation is to introduce traditional cultural elements into modern design. People also pay more and more attention to goods embodied traditional culture. Therefore, it has become an important direction for designers to effectively integrate products that meet modern aesthetic needs in the pattern design of canvas bags, which is highlighted in the introduction of traditional cultural elements based on the effective combination of Figure 4(I,IV), especially in Figure 4-IV. However, the current challenging is how to meet the aesthetic needs of modern consumer groups while keeping the balance between inheritance and innovation design of traditional cultural elements, which has become the key to solving the above problems (Liang, 2019).

3.4. Obtaining perceptual expression of aesthetic experience

Based on the canvas bag in Figure 4, we first need to understand the aesthetic needs of different consumers, and each consumer group has different aesthetic needs, so in the process of the innovative pattern design of the application of the traditional cultural elements for the canvas bags, the first step is to determine which consumer group does it belong to. Relevant studies show that canvas bag consumption groups are mainly concentrated in housewives, fashionable young people and some intellectuals, who usually use the canvas bag in their respective scenes (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Canvas bags for different consumers in various scenes.

Every time housewives go to the supermarket or vegetable market, they do not want to choose a plastic bag that they need to pay for, so they prefer to carry a canvas bag, while intellectuals like to choose a canvas bag because of their good education, high environmental awareness and self-dicipline. At the same time, due to its simple style, low-cost and rich types, canvas bags are not only a symbol of environmental awareness, but also a fashion trend item among contemporary young people who pursue individual taste and catch up fashion (Liang, 2019). It can be seen that the users of canvas bags are mainly concentrated in three categories: fashionable young people, intellectuals and housewives. The characteristics of these three consumer groups and the occasions for using canvas bags are described in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Consumption characteristics and occasions for the use of canvas bags of the three types of consumers

Groups	Consumption characteristics	Personality trait	Occasions for using
A	Young men and women with a certain financial foundation, and their consumption power is relatively limited, paying more attention to quality and style of the goods, pursuing for the personal character, catching fashion, showing concern for the sustainability and environmental protection.	Having the spirit of catching fresh and unique fashion styles, full of creativity and a strong desire to express personal style.	Going to work, go shopping, keeping fit, making beauty, or business trips
B	Intellectuals having a certain economic strength, with good academic literacy, rigorous thinking and innovation ability, and showing great concern about the quality and style, environmental protection and sustainability as the consumers.	With rational thinking, unique insight, analytical and strong self-reflecting ability	going to work, go shopping, participating in academic activities or traveling
C	Married women, paying attention to the practicality of products, and the economic benefits as the consumers.	Being responsible, careful, gentle, patient and caring	Go shopping, traveling, making beauty, taking a walk

Fashionable youth are enthusiastic and unrestrained, with distinct personality, which requires individuality and the pursuit of fashion trend; While intellectuals are relatively calm, pattern color and layout also need to conform to their personal characteristics and self-identity recognition; Housewives pay more attention to the light and practical of the bag, to meet diversified needs. Although the above three types of consumer groups are in a modern living environment, but for the design of the patterns of the canvas bag also have their own different aesthetic needs, which means the traditional pattern elements on the canvas bag innovative design has different aesthetic requirements. From the perspective of the current popularity or scope of use of canvas bags, this paper selects interviewers in the one of the most developed cities in China according to the characteristics of the three consumer groups shown in Table 1, and conducts an interview survey on the design of the Miao ethnic group’s pattern, that is “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese on canvas bags. The specific five interviewers are respectively selected from the three consumer groups mentioned above, and the total of 15 consumers are interviewed one by one (the 15 respondents participated voluntarily, who fully understand the purpose of the interview, the locations for interview were all at proper public places, and the contents of the interview have been avoided any personal privacy). Before the interview, the purpose of the interview should be explained in detail and the questions to be answered after the interview should be designed well. In this paper, the fashionable young people, intellectuals and housewives of the three different consumer groups are respectively referred to as the different groups A, B and C.According to the basic principles of the interview and its’ specific steps (Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2004),the interview survey is conducted as it has been shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Three types of consumer group interview survey.

According to Figure 6, first determine the object to be design, and then the primary task is to prepare the questions to be answered in the interview, taking full account of the cognitive differences among different interview groups, in order to avoid the misunderstanding or deviation from the interviewers, and ensure the reliability of the interview results, the appropriate suggestions should be given to relevant questions with the help of key words in the interview process. The interview questions and keywords for each question are shown as in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Questions and keywords

Number	A description of the questions related to the interview	Prompted keywords
1	To the traditional patterns designed on the canvas bag,what types of it do you like best?	“pattern”, “style”
2	To the traditional pattern designed on the canvas bag, which colors do you like best, how to match this color well?	“color”, “collocation”
3	To the traditional pattern designed on the canvas bag, how to arrange the overall layout of the pattern in your view?	“location”, “distribution”
4	What do you care most about to the indicated meanings of the traditional pattern designed on the canvas bag?	“meaning”, “auspicious”
5	To the traditional patterns designed on the canvas bag, what do you favorite to the patterns as a whole?	“visual”, “appearance”

Using the mobile network social networking questionnaire star mini program, the questionnaire star was designed, and 5 interview volunteers were selected according to the 3 categories of consumer groups, totaling 15 interviewers determined. After explaining the concept of questionnaire design and the purposes of the survey in detail, the questionnaire mini program will be sent to interviewees, and the key points of the interview questions will be explained in detail, then the interviewees will be kindly asked to answer the relevant questions carefully and independently. After the interview, the corresponding data was output from the questionnaire star applet, and the micro-word cloud tool (http://fenci.weiciyun.com) was used for classification and semantic analysis. The specific process is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Summarizing of questionnaire and data processing.

The interview survey involves three different consumer groups, so the output data need to be classified and analyzed, so as to obtain different perceptual expressions of different consumer groups for the application of traditional pattern innovative design into canvas bags. In the data analysis, the word cloud map and word frequency map of micro-word cloud tool can be used to calculate the occurrence frequency of words. The higher the occurrence frequency, the higher the attention in language expression. The lexical network graph reflects the relationship between words and the important degree of words. The network node represents each keyword, the core word is in the central node of the network, the line between nodes represents the co-occurrence of the two, and the thickness of the line represents the number of co-occurrence. The lexical relationship matrix is generated based on the lexical network graph. The element value of the matrix represents the degree of correlation between words. According to the lexical relation matrix, the order of words with different degree of density in relation to core words is obtained. This order indicates which aspects that interviewees pay attention to around the core meaning, so as to accurately grasp the real perception of different consumer groups on the inheritance and innovation design of traditional patterns on canvas bags. According to the word cloud map and word frequency map output by the micro-word cloud tool, the core words of different consumer groups on each question were mastered, and sub-core words closely related to core words were further obtained according to the vocabulary relation matrix (as shown in Table 3). These core words and sub-core words reflect the interviewees’ different feelings and expectations on the traditional patterns and innovative design patterns on canvas bags.

Table 3. Core words and sub-core words

Questions	Group A		Group B		Group C
	Core words	Sub-core words	Core words	Sub-core words	Core words	Sub-core words
1	Pattern	Impressive>unique> brief	Pattern	Pattern>connotation>brief	Pattern	Brief>national>soft
2	Colour	Colourful>bright>energetic	Colour	Colourful>elegant>dignified	Colour	Colour>soft>comfort
3	Layout	Position>symmetric>new	Layout	Position>harmonious>rule	Layout	Position> regular> uniform
4	Texture	Indicated meanings>good luck>good	Texture	Indicated meaning>connotation>good luck	Texture	Auspicious>good luck>happy
5	Outlook	Size >proper > tidy	Outlook	Size>proper>dignified	Outlook	Size> moderate>in good order

Note: Sub-core words are the first three words that are related to the core words

According to Table 3, in view of the innovative design effect of traditional patterns on canvas bags, the five core words obtained from the questions answered by the interview of three types of consumer groups are: pattern, color, layout, texture and outlook. Each core word corresponds to 3 sub-core words, a total of 45 sub-core words, excluding the repeated sub-core words, the remaining 27, and they are impact, unique, brief, connotation, national, soft, bright, vibrant, elegant, stable, comfortable, location, symmetry, harmony, law, regular, uniform, auspicious, beautiful, size, reasonable, regular, moderate, happy, moderate, size, orderly.These core words and sub-core words show the perceptual cognition of the three types of consumer groups on the traditional pattern innovative design of canvas bags, and well reveal their different aesthetic needs.

In terms of pattern, fashionable young people prefer to have a unique, visual impressive design, so the innovative design on the canvas bag can not copy the traditional patterns. For intellectuals, due to their higher level of knowledge, they prefer simple and meaningful designs. Housewives groups concern more about daily life trifles, they prefer the pattern to be more tidy and soft. According to the sub-core words, the three types of consumers want the pattern to be proper, rather than fully occupied the whole surface, and to leave a certain space, which is also in line with the fast pace of modern life in the case of people’s desire to leave some visual blank space.

In terms of color, trendy youth prefer bright colors, so when carrying out the traditional pattern innovation design on the canvas bag, the color should be different from that of the traditional pattern, and the bright color should be moderately increased; For the intellectuals, they prefer simple and elegant color design. Such groups as housewives are more inclined to live a harmonious and happy life, so the pattern color is preferred to be soft.

In terms of layout, trendy youth prefer to design symmetrical layout, but also expect to have unique characteristics for the position of design patterns, that is, break through the traditional center position design; With a higher cognitive level, intellectuals can feel the design effect as a whole on the basis of paying attention to the rules of design layout, a black background with a light-colored design pattern of the off-centered. Such groups as housewives prefer the regularity of the design layout and the even distribution of the design patterns.

In the aspect of the texture of the innovative patterns design, fashionable youth, intellectuals and housewives all hope that the innovative design of traditional patterns should have a good meaning, but in terms of the understanding of these connotations, intellectuals prefer to retain more traditional.

In terms of the outlook, fashionable young people prefer to the proper size of design patterns in the overall, the outlook should be neat, with a unique appeal; Intellectuals prefer to design patterns of moderate size and dignified overall effect; Such groups as housewives prefer to design patterns of moderate size and also hope that the design patterns should be orderly, which fully reflects the yearning of such consumer groups for a better life.

3.5. Mapping of aesthetic experience to features space

The core words (pattern, color, layout, texture, outlook) and the sub-core words (impact, unique, concise, connotation, nationality, soft, bright, vitality, elegant, stable, comfortable, location, symmetry, harmony, regularity, regularity, evenness, auspiciousness, beauty, size, reasonable, regularity, moderation, happiness, moderation, size, order) based on perceptual cognition, It reflects the aesthetic requirements of different consumer groups for canvas bag pattern design. The perceptual expression of different consumer groups for canvas bag design mainly focuses on the pattern, color, layout and outlook at the level of semantic difference, and has a common expectation for the meaning of the pattern. Therefore, when establishing the spatial mapping of aesthetic experience to design features, it should be based on the sub-core word of the main core word “pattern”, which reflects the interviewer’s perceptual expression of the “shape” of the design pattern; The main core word “layout” and the sub-core word “location” reflect the interviewees’ perceptual expression of the distribution and location of design patterns respectively. The sub-core words of the main core word “outlook” explain the interviewers’ emotional expression of the size of the design pattern. In addition to the main core word “texture”, the other four main core words can correspond to the geometric features and color features of the design pattern. Then, how to establish the mapping relationship between aesthetic experience and design features space? According to Figure 3, the mapping relationship between aesthetic experience and design features space is constructed, as shown in Figure 8 below.

Figure 8. Innovative design for different aesthetic experiences.

The perceptual expression of the above different consumer groups mainly focuses on the four aspects, pattern, color, layout and outlook in terms of semantic differences, and in terms of the connotations of the pattern, the three different consumer groups have the common expectations. Therefore, the establishing the spatial mapping of aesthetic experience to design features in this paper, mainly carries out based on the five features (shape, size, layout, position and color) from four aspects(pattern, color, layout and outlook). Among them, shape, size, layout and position belong to geometric features, which can be specifically expressed as follows:

${\mathrm{K}}_1=$ Geometric features; ${\mathrm{K}}_2=$Color features

Geometric features include shape, size, layout, and location, namely:

${\mathrm{K}}_1=\left\{{\mathrm{F}}_{1,{\mathrm{K}}_1},{\mathrm{F}}_{2,{\mathrm{K}}_1},{\mathrm{F}}_{3,{\mathrm{K}}_1},{\mathrm{F}}_{4,{\mathrm{K}}_1}\right\}$

Where: ${\mathrm{F}}_{1,{\mathrm{K}}_1}=$ Styling, ${\mathrm{F}}_{2,{\mathrm{K}}_1}=$ Size, ${\mathrm{F}}_{3,{\mathrm{K}}_1}=$ Layout, ${\mathrm{F}}_{4,{\mathrm{K}}_1}=$ Position.

By using the definition method of Kansei engineering word pairs (Dermawan et al., 2023), “shape”, “size”, “layout” and “position” can be further defined as:

${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1}=$Modeling-even, ${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2}=$Modeling-uneven

${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(2,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1}$=Size—medium, ${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(2,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2}=$Size-excessive

${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(3,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1}=$Layout-dense, ${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(3,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2}=$Layout-sparse

${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(4,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1}=$ Position-symmetry,${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(4,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2}=$ Position-unbalance

Color features can be considered only in terms of color monotony, so ${\mathrm{K}}_2={\mathrm{F}}_{1,{\mathrm{K}}_2}=\left\{{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)2}\right\}$

${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)1}$= Color -gorgeous, ${\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)1}=$Color—delicate colors

In this way, the features space of traditional pattern innovation design on the canvas bag can be defined as:

$\mathrm{K}=\left\{{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(2,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(2,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(3,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(3,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(4,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(4,{\mathrm{K}}_1\right)2},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)1},{\mathrm{F}}_{\left(1,{\mathrm{K}}_2\right)2}\right\}$

The definition of features space provides an important basis for the future design so that to meet different aesthetic experiences.

In terms of the outlook, fashionable young people prefer to the proper size of design patterns in the overall, the outlook should be neat, with a unique appeal; Intellectuals prefer to design patterns of moderate size and dignified overall effect; Such groups as housewives prefer to design patterns of moderate size and also hope that the design patterns should be orderly, which fully reflects the yearning of such consumer groups for a better life.

4. The innovative design of the canvas bag with Chinese traditional pattern of Miao ethnic group

The magnificent and varied patterns of Miao ethnic group deeply interpret the unique cultural connotations and cultural emotion of Miao ethnic group. From the perspective of art, design and semiotics, Miao ethnic group’s traditional patterns are emotional symbols with unique artistic charm. However, in modern design, the original beauty of Miao ethnic group’s traditional patterns can only be accepted by consumers through the effective combination with modern fashion (Yijie & Huiwen, 2020). While modern life is full of individuality and diversification, ethnic pattern element symbols need to be scientifically combined with modern aesthetics to sublimate aesthetic characteristics with both cultural connotations and modern characteristics, cater to the aesthetic needs of modern consumers, and enjoy the pure charm of ethnic element symbols in modern beauty (Qiong, 2010). How to integrate Miao traditional patterns into the innovative design of fashion canvas bags, through the analysis, extraction and redesign of traditional patterns, based on the appearance features space K, to design fashion canvas bags that meet different modern aesthetic experiences, is the key of this paper.

4.1. Classification and characteristics of Miao ethnic group’s traditional patterns

Miao traditional pattern is an important part of Miao ethnic group’s culture, rich in connotations and profound in meanings. It mainly includes animal and plant patterns, geometric patterns and folk culture patterns (Li, 2014). The details are shown in Figure 9 below:

Figure 9. Traditional Miao ethnic group’s pattern classification, characteristics and cultural connotations.

The animal and plant patterns in Figure 9 originated from the Miao ethnic group living in mountainous areas, who have deep feelings and worship for animals and plants in nature. All kinds of animals and plants, such as dragon, bird, fish, tiger and orchid, have different forms and symbolic meanings. For example, dragon stands for power and mystery, bird stands for freedom and happiness, and orchid stands for purity and purity. Geometric motifs are formed by combining lines of geometric shapes, expressing an overall sense of beauty and order. Common geometric patterns include spiral patterns, symmetrical patterns and recurrent patterns, which not only convey the Miao people’s pursuit of judgment, but also contain a mysterious atmosphere. Folk culture patterns originate from the history and folk activities of the Miao people. For example, activities such as the Torch Festival, Lusheng dancing in Chinese pronunciation and dragon boat racing are often designed in the patterns, showing people’s life scenes and ritual activities in the form of patterns, which are not only emotional sustenance, but also life perception. Just as said, Miao ethnic group’s folk patterns carry the history and culture of the Miao people, reflect their religious beliefs, and convey their expectations for a better life. In the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture, the research on the inheritance and development of Miao ethnic group’s pattern not only reflects the treasure and inheritance of Miao culture, but also provides a steady source of power for the diversified development of Miao ethnic group’s culture under the background of globalization.

4.2. Extraction and redesign of traditional Miao ethnic group’s pattern symbols

In this paper, the traditional pattern of one of the representative star, mountain and river patterns, “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese, the two square continuous pattern is selected. In actual fact, “Jiuqu Jianghe”, as one of the popular patterns to Chinese Miao ethnic group, often used in batik technology, and it is a very representative of Miao ethnic group’s traditional clothing patterns (Yan, 2020).This graphic pattern records the tragic and stirring course of the great migration of the Miao ethnic group in the history of their exile from their hometown. The pattern is made up of diamond-shaped knotting of different sizes, as shown in Figure 10(a). The texture of the whole pattern reflects the tortuous experience of the Miao ethnic ancestors’ migration. The pattern is framed by a square, representing the city wall. The small square on the four sides represents the corner tower, and the cross in the middle represents the street. The color of the pattern “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese takes cyan as the base color, and red represents enthusiasm. The overall structure is composed of the same arrangement of elements. According to the above characteristics, it is planned to extract the symbols of basic pattern elements of the “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese, and the whole extraction process is shown in Figure 10(b) below.

Figure 10. Extraction process of traditional pattern elements.

In the process of pattern innovation design, the pattern of “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese is first decomposed to obtain the pattern texture containing the most cultural elements, and then the pattern texture is decomposed, as shown in Figure 10, it is decomposed into two basic pattern textures, and then the two basic pattern textures are re-decomposed, and finally decomposed into a unilateral graphic element.

On the basis of extracting the symbols of the above pattern elements, it is redesigned. The basic principle of its design is to copy and rearrange and combine the pattern texture that contains the most cultural elements on the basis of not changing the decomposed pattern texture, and to carry out local pattern deformation for the pattern texture that contains the most cultural elements, but on the premise of not changing its overall structure. The result is shown in Figure 11 below.

Figure 11. Deformation design of symbols of traditional pattern elements.

According to the deformation design of traditional pattern element symbols in Figures 11, 11- (b) −1 is shown as the basic pattern element for the innovative design on the canvas bag, which adopts the broken line elements from the traditional pattern of the Miao ethnic group,“Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese, and the rhombus pattern is selected in the crossing points to convey the geometric natural images of rivers and lakes. The overall pattern is a virtual and real combination, and reflects the balance of Yin and Yang in traditional Chinese culture, the intersection between different broken line highlights unique and harmonious beauty, retains the connotations of Chinese Miao ethnic group’s traditional culture, and reflects the modern beauty of pursuing nature, harmony and tolerance.

4.3. Innovative design of fashion canvas bag with the traditional pattern

On the basis of the above symbolic redesign of traditional pattern, the meaning is characterized according to the perceptual words represented by each element in the set. The specific feature can be expressed in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Innovative design features space of fashion canvas bag.

According to the features space of innovative design of fashion canvas bags in Figure 12, three different styles of canvas bags containing traditional cultural elements can be designed in combination with different perceptual expressions of three consumer groups, and the specific styles are shown in Figure 13 below.

Figure 13. Innovative design based on traditional Miao ethnic group patterns’ inheritance.

An effective way to verify the above design effect is to evaluate whether the design style conforms to the aesthetic experience of consumers from the perspective of consumers. According to the previous analysis, consumers’ aesthetic experience is usually expressed through perceptual adjectives. Therefore, this paper collects perceptual adjectives related to the innovative design of canvas bags through the network platform and other ways, and makes a cluster analysis. It is found that: “elegant”, “coordinated”, “fashionable”, “simple”, “comfortable” and “connotation” are commonly used to describe the design style of canvas bags. In terms of traditional cultural inheritance and innovative design, consumers often choose the word “connotation”.According to the design method of Kansei engineering words, the antonyms of the above 6 adjectives are determined, so as to form 6 pairs of perceptual adjectives “elegant-popular, coordinated-unbalanced, fashion- outdated, simple-cumbersome, comfortable-nervous, connotation-representation”. In quantitative analysis, according to the American psychologist Charles Egerton Osgood’s Semantic Differential Scale (Osgood et al., 1957) method, 7-level difference quantification for 6 perceptual adjectives, that is {−3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3} to quantify the degree of preference between each perceptual adjective pair. For example, in the 7-level difference quantification of the adjectives “elegant—popular”, 3 means extremely elegant, 2 means very elegant, 1 means elegant, 0 is average, −1 means popular, −2 means quite popular, and −3 means extremely popular. In order to more intuitively show the differences expressed between different integers, In this paper, preference graphs are used for description (Wang et al., 2023).

The preference graph is based on the preference magnitude value of each perceptual adjective, reflecting the intensity of its preference (Patil & Rane, 2023). For example, for the fashionable youth, according to the characteristics of the fashionable youth in Table 1, the fashionable youth are more inclined to intuitive and popular design styles while appreciating elegance. The preference of the fashionable youth for “elegance—popular” is shown in Figure 14 below. The heavier the color of the photocopied part of the image, the more inclined the perceptual adjective is (Yu-Ming, 2019).

Figure 14. The preference chart of elegant - popular for the fashionable youth.

Similarly, the other 5 pairs of perceptual adjectives are analyzed one by one. As for the emotional adjective “coordinated-unbalanced”, the fashionable youth pay more attention to some asymmetrical expressions in the design because of their pursuit of individuality and novelty. As for “fashion-outdated”, fashionable youth are more inclined to fashion, rejecting retro and outdated designs; for “simple-cumbersome”, fashionable youth keep up with the pace of social development, most of them tend to simple design; for “comfortable-nervous”, fashionable youth pursue stimulation, easy to impulse, easy to accept dynamic design; for “connotation-representation”, fashion youth tend to choose the design with a certain cultural implication to reflect cultural taste. The preference degree of the above fashion youth for different perceptual adjective pairs is shown as the Figure 15 below.

Figure 15. Fashion youth’s preference for 6 pairs of perceptual adjectives.

In addition, according to the characteristics of intellectuals and housewives shown in Table 1, intellectuals have rational thinking and unique insights and strong analytical ability on problems, and are more inclined to choose elegant, coordinated, simple, comfortable and endowed with connotation design, while for “fashion-outdated” style, they pay more attention to retaining traditional classic elements. The housewife group is relatively careful, gentle, patient, more humanistic care, which determines that they tend to maintain neutral perceptual cognition in the “elegant-popular” and “fashion-outdated” choice, easy to accept coordinated, simple, comfortable and outlook of the design style. Based on these analyses, the degree of preference of the intellectual group and the housewife group for the 6 pairs of perceptual adjective pairs is also drawn one by one(as the Figure 15 shown), which serves as the basis for drawing the analysis charts of the survey results of different consumer groups.

At the same time, for the three canvas bag design styles as shown in Figure 13(a-c), the questionnaire star mini-program was written again and published online for random survey. After the surveyors determined that they belonged to one of the three consumer groups (fashionable youth, intellectuals or housewives), according to their own perception, score selection for each design style. The network survey finally retrieved 27 valid questionnaires, including 11 valid questionnaires for fashionable youth, 9 valid questionnaires for intellectuals and 7 valid questionnaires for housewives. The average value method was used to calculate the output data, and the line chart was selected to draw the calculation results on the preference graph of different consumer groups for perceptual words established above. The perceptual cognition of three types of consumer groups on the three design styles is shown in Figure 16 below.

Figure 16. Analysis chart of survey results of three different consumer groups.

From the analysis of the coincidence degree of the broken line and the photocopy part in Figure 16, it is found that the fashionable youth tend to design style Figure 13(a), the intellectuals tend to design style Figure 13(b), and the housewives tend to design style Figure 13(c).

The above results further verify that the targeted construction of product features based on the expression of consumers’ emotional vocabulary can meet consumers’ aesthetic needs for products to the maximum extent, and realize consumers’ quantitative expression of product features at the same time. It provides data support for designers to objectively grasp the differences of aesthetic experience of products among different consumer groups, and then provides a guarantee for designing products that meet the aesthetic experience of consumers.

5. Conclusion

With the rapid development of social economy and the continuous improvement of people’s material and cultural living standards, consumers are paying more and more attention to the cultural implications and aesthetic taste of products while choosing their ideal material products. The unique beauty of traditional Chinese patterns and symbols presented by their profound national cultural connotations and historical precipitations have been widely recognized in modern product design. Taking the innovative design of traditional Miao ethnic group’s pattern “Jiuqu Jianghe” pronounced in Chinese on sustainable canvas bag as an example, this paper extracts and re-designs traditional pattern elements based on the analysis and construction of the mapping relationship between consumers’ aesthetic experience and product features space, analyzes and constructs the features space of traditional Miao ethnic group’s pattern symbol design to meet different consumers’ aesthetic experience from the perspective of Kansei engineering. The 7-level semantic difference quantification method of Kansei Engineering is adopted to conduct quantitative research on different design schemes one by one to verify their satisfaction degree to the aesthetic experience of consumer groups. The research shows that in the process of integrating traditional patterns into modern product design, it is necessary not only to avoid rote copying, but also to inherit and innovate reasonably. Only by adopting scientific methods, can we meet the aesthetic needs of modern consumers to the maximum extent and help the sustainable development of traditional culture.

Future research should pay attention to the limitations of the obtained interview data, because of the sample amount and interviewees’ personal preferences, and even the interview methods used in acquiring consumers’ aesthetic experience. In the next step, we can make full use of the questionnaire star tool designed by this research to improve the universality of samples by collecting data for longer period of time. At the same time, we will apply the method of consumer aesthetic experience to product feature spatial projection to the design of other cultural and creative products, so as to better promote the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2286732

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ma Yu-Ming

Ma Yu-ming (1997), female, A Master of product design with merit in the University of Creative Arts of UK, and now as a Ph.D. student in School of Innovative Design of the City University of Macau. Her research orientation focuses on computer-aided creative design, cultural innovation design, cross-cultural communication, etc.