The effect of external and environmental factors on perceived comfort: the car-seat experience

Today, comfort and discomfort related to the automobile seat are widely studied. A previous work, published by this study’s authors (Naddeo et al., 2014a), affirmed that the evaluation of the perceived comfort associated with the driving experience could not be performed by considering only the driver’s seat. The authors offered a theoretical matrix to evaluate the comfort of car seats through identification of all involved aspects and the interactions with external factors inside the vehicle (personal, task and environment characteristics). To verify this hypothesis, a sample of subjects evaluated a car seat by interacting with it in five ways: interaction with the real prototype, presentation of a real prototype, photographic presentation of a real prototype, presentation of a 3D virtual digitized prototype, and interaction with the real prototype placed inside the car. The Kansei technique has been used as an evaluation tool to assess the individual and subjective emotional impressions of the car seat where all the senses of the consumer are involved. The results of the study show how the same object looks different if evaluated in different ways and the effects of external and environmental factors on the perceived comfort.