Abstract
Estimating material properties is a key task when judging online apparel. To match expectations with reality, we designed and investigated various visual touch screen interactions that aimed to communicate the multisensorial properties of ‘softness’, ‘thinness’, ‘shininess’ and ‘elasticity’. In the first (lab) experiment, we measured how perceptually distinguishable the fabrics are from each other using the Thurstonian-based metric NDL (Number of Distinguishable Levels). We found that observers agreed well with each other and that the NDL varied between fabric properties: about 4 for softness and approximately 2 for the other three adjectives. Next, we designed a touch screen interaction, inspired by ‘ShoogleIt’, that let participants slide the fabric over a cylindrical obstacle. Thurstonian scaling experiments showed that softness estimations (‘expectations’) were in line with what we found in the lab (‘reality’) but that for the other three adjectives the diagnosticity was less strong. Next, we designed two other interactions that were intended to primarily communicate thinness (by draping the fabric) and elasticity (by stretching the fabric). While thinness diagnosticity increased, elasticity was still difficult to infer. The latter result could be due to the inability to infer exerted force from visual information. The results indicate clearly that there are differences in how successful various properties can be visually communicated. Softness and thinness can effectively be communicated, but shininess and elasticity cannot.