A comparison between industrial experts' and novices' haptic perceptual organization: a tool to identify descriptors of the handle of fabrics

Abstract In descriptive analysis, the establishing of the list of attributes is crucial. Attributes should account for consumers' perceptions and be understood by professionals for efficient communication. This work was aimed at identifying the most appropriate attributes for fabric description from the terminology associated with both experts' and novices' haptic perceptual spaces. Eleven industrial experts and two groups of novices (20 males and 20 females) evaluated 26 clothing fabrics. They performed (1) a free-sorting task based on haptic similarities, (2) a description of the previously formed groups, and (3) a hedonic rating task for each fabric. The perceptual organization was simil…