Discovery and Extraction of Cultural Traits in Intangible Cultural Heritages Based on Kansei Engineering: Taking Zhuang Brocade Weaving Techniques as an Example

Abstract

Taking China’s national intangible cultural heritage (ICH) Zhuang brocade as the research object, its cultural traits were extracted through scientific methods from the perspective of Kansei Engineering. Samples were collected through desk research, expert interviews, and questionnaires for qualitative and quantitative research. The semantic differential method was adopted to analyze the vocabulary descriptions of different types of Zhuang brocade samples, and the Likert scale was used to measure the viewer’s visual perception. Eye tracker experiments were conducted to verify and further explore the cultural traits of Zhuang brocade so that the emotions in this ICH can be quantified more scientifically. Based on the heat map and data, scientific and reasonable descriptions and typical shapes best matching Zhuang brocade cultural traits were acquired. By using new technologies to interpret ICHs, this study proposed another way to extract cultural traits from ICH. The extracted Zhuang brocade cultural traits in this study could help improve the understanding of Zhuang brocade. This study could also provide certain references for the modern application and design of Zhuang brocade.