The European Kansei Group exists to promote and develop Kansei approaches in academia and industry. It provides an opportunity to share knowledge and network with Kansei practitioners.
Additionally to this website, the group lives online regular teleconferences and a Linkedin group. Regular yearly meetings are also organised either during KEER conferences (including joint-workshop or special sessions) or during European based symposiums. The group has members all over Europe, as well as scattered around the world.
The definition of Kansei is rooted in Japanese philosophy and culture, and is difficult to package into a single sentence. Kansei has been translated as sensitivity, sensibility, feeling, emotion and affect. Kansei can be the process, but it can also be the outcome, the unified perception of meaning and value of an artefact. For this perspective, Kansei stands for making artefacts, services and environments that meet people’s subjective or emotional needs. Kansei Engineering is concerned with measuring people’s subjective impression of products and relating their responses to the physical variables or features of the design. It can also be referred to as Affective Engineering in the West. Kansei Science embraces cognitive neuroscience and psychophysiology. Kansei Design is concerned with establishing the Kansei approach earlier in the design process, so that Kansei is established through design synthesis, rather than analysis.