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It is desirable that shape appeal in craft design takes people's cultural and emotional influencers into consideration. Five Royal Lords worship, prevalent in the southwest coastal part of Taiwan and a source of religious and spiritual support to the local residents, offers such a shape appeal. This study takes the design of Taiwan's cultural handicrafts as the main point of discussion and uses Kansei engineering with semantic technique to promote the linkage between shape and the mental image of the Five Royal Lords' headwear. There are only two types of traditional headwear for the Five Royal Lords: the Imperial Crown and Lord Crown, despite the different personal characteristics of the five deities. This study aims to design a crown for each that matches their individuality.

In the first stage of the research process, the Kawakita Jiro method was used to arrive at appropriate descriptions representative of the deities' individuality. Fuzzy set theory was then applied to convert the relationship between the representative descriptions and headwear shape features into a quantitative one, after which the headwear could be redesigned and validated.

The study results show that: (1) analysis of the relationship between shape features and representative deity descriptions offered guidance to the redesign. (2) A method combining fuzzy theory and description terms could generate quantitative data that helped to provide design suggestions and result validation, supporting both scientific rationality and designers' sensibility. (3) The validation revealed that the redesigned headwear was better than the original headwear.

The study successfully established a design and development process featuring collaboration by folklore experts, designers, craftspeople and worshippers, and helping to promote new cultural product development. The success of the research process can serve as a reference to the development of other different products with shape features.

Belief in Mazu has a crucial cultural status in Taiwan and the coastal area of Fujian, China. The design and manufacture of apparel and accessories to be placed on statues of the deity are also considered a sacred and critical part of the religion’s cultural and artistic inheritance. The crown hat of Mazu is one of the most essential elements of the deity’s apparel. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study explored the styles of Mazu crown hats using Kansei engineering (KE). People generally use adjectives words to provide aesthetic evaluations. Fuzzy theory is suitable for processing linguistic problems that include vagueness, thereby providing a reasonable method of quantifying such aesthetic evaluations. Therefore, this study first established a fuzzy positioning model (FPM) of word evaluations for analysis. Factor analysis was used to obtain representative image adjectives that represented Mazu’s image. Fuzzy analysis methods were then employed to rank the various image adjectives through evaluation words and to determine the differences between adjectives. Finally, on the basis of image analysis results and expert suggestions, the crown hat was redesigned and its suitability verified.

Four results were obtained. First, four image adjectives appropriate for representing Mazu’s image were identified, of which “noble and kind” is the most suitable. Second, fuzzy analysis was found to successfully rank style images. Third, the crown hat style and design characteristics suitable for Mazu were acquired. Fourth, the verification demonstrated that the redesign effectively enhanced the perceived image of the crown hat design.

This study employed KE to improve the design of a Mazu crown hat. The proposed FPM can aid the development of cultural and creative design.

This study proposed a research model for verifying the structural relationships among users' perceived spatial presence (VR affordance), situational interest (affective factor) and behavioral attitudes (outcome) toward online virtual museum navigation. What role of situational interest plays in the relationships between spatial presence and outcomes was further examined.

There were 141 adults invited to participate in the research trials on the navigation of the online virtual museum which was established by 3D space capture techniques. This study conducted a series of PLS-SEM to analyze the participants' quantitative responses to the surveys of spatial presence, situational interest and attitudes.

The testing of reliability and validity for the measurement model of this study was satisfied. The significance of users' perceived situational interest: attention demand, instant enjoyment and exploration intention when navigating the online virtual museum with perceptions of spatial presence were identified. The mediation of situational interest in the relationships between spatial presence and behavioral attitudes were also verified.

For the practical design of desktop-based online virtual museums, it is suggested that more engaging strategies such as narrative storytelling and gamified interaction could be integrated to enhance users' situational interest including attention demand, instant enjoyment and exploration intention.

Through the examination of situational interest from multiple constructs, the research model of this study advanced the conceptual framework for understanding the consequences of VR affordance in online virtual museum navigation. The theoretical contribution to verifying the mediated role of situational interest was made.

Cellular manufacturing is a layout approach to increase productivity in manufacturing. The basic concept of cellular manufacturing is to exploit the similarity between parts and manufacturing processes. Parts similar in design and manufacture are grouped into families. Then machines are identified to process part families. In the literature, the problem is studied using two approaches: standard and generalized formulations. Compares the effectiveness of cluster analysis techniques for both formulations.