Development of Tactile Experience Based Evaluation Method of Tactile Sensations of Cosmetics

Abstract

When consumers select cosmetics, they judge whether the product match their preferences using their five senses, especially smell, vision and touch. Thus, it is very important to understand the olfactory, visual and tactile factors that the consumer desires in order to develop optimal products. As the tactile experience that consumers desire is expressed verbally, it is not trivial to understand the specific underlying tactile sensations. Therefore, we have developed original tactile sensors for tactile experiences of cosmetics and, using these sensors, we have quantified the consumers’ tactile sensations. In this paper, I’ll introduce two of these sensors: a softness sensor system that can measure perceived skin softness when fingers push skin, and a wearable contact force sensor that uses the force of grasping cosmetics to estimate the tactile sensation of cosmetics.