Summarizing the image adjectives for the construction of the picture database for lifestyle image board

Design targets the promotion consumers’ motivation to buy more products, whose sensual appeal has become the core of design. This research targets at the lifestyles of three major groups of people in Taiwan: “high-tech groups”, “LOHAS groups”, and “quality groups”. Using literature review, questionnaires, and expert interviews, the frequently used images syntaxes used in three major dimensions: product design, designers, and lifestyle clusters are collected and summarized into 237 items. These image syntaxes are further categorized and selected, yielding 122 image syntaxes in six categories. At last, experts in different areas of design are requested to pick frequently used image syntaxes in the primary stage when designing for these three groups in order to construct the appropriate image syntaxes used in and their association with different areas of design and lifestyle clusters. The results can become the foundation of the next stage of this research in order to construct a lifestyle oriented image board database.


Introduction
Nowadays, consumers tend to buy merchandise with sensual appeal instead of functional purposes.Moreover, consumers are motivated to purchase merchandise that appeal to them sensually.In addition, the goal of design is to motivate consumers into consuming; therefore, the sensual appeal of products has become the core of design.In order to achieve this goal, designers introduce many different methods in the design process to inspire their design thinking.An image board is one of the methods frequently used by designers.According to related studies, consumers that have purchased products designed with image board show to have more pleasure and satisfaction from them [1].Therefore, positive and active meanings in the overall design of products can be derived by introducing image board in the process of design.[2] In the process of preparing and making image boards, the researchers encountered a few problems: 1.Most of the image graphics are collected in accordance with the designers' experience and personal feelings, showing to be subjective.2. The association between image graphics and consumer groups are subjectively decided by the designers, and do not always comply with the intended objectives.3. Image graphics must be collected separately for each case, lowering efficiency.Moreover, graphics are mostly printed materials, occupying much space.And it is difficult to discard old materials to renew the archive.Considering the problems, this research proposes to construct lifestyle image boards from a broader perspective with Baxter's (1995) method [3] to construct a graphic database with images associated to different consumers' lifestyles to solve the problems of time and energy exhausting in collecting pictures, and avoid positioning the pictures and grouping them with the designers' subjective views.In this stage, this research plans to find out the image adjectives corresponding to different lifestyles.[4]

Methodology
In order to further understand the association between lifestyle and product category, literature review, questionnaire, and expert interview are used as method in this research.It intends to finish the lifestyle image syntaxes used frequently in three different lifestyle clusters and products.
First, the researchers determined the three major lifestyle clusters with reference to E-ICP Taiwan Lifestyle Bible, 2014, [5] a marketing database that analyzes Asian consumers.Then, online questionnaire was conducted to collect the image syntaxes frequently used in product design.The questionnaire was completed voluntarily by net users, with 26 valid questionnaires.The age group falling between 19 and 30, 17 of them were working people, and 9 students.12 of them had a design background, and 14 of them had no design background.Moreover, massive image syntaxes used frequently by designers were collected by reviewing related literature, newspaper, magazines, and more.Then, five professional designers with at least five years of experience in related fields were invited to attend the expert interview.They were requested to identify the syntaxes used frequently in design from the pool.At the same time, this research also collected and categorized image syntaxes related to three major lifestyles by reviewing related literature, newspapers, and magazines.
This research integrated the images syntaxes collected from three perspectives.Then five experts with at least five years of experience in design were invited to a focus group interview to categorize and delete the image syntaxes.The experts included four males and one female (as shown in Fig. 4), with ages between 30 and 50 years old.Two of them were design teachers in universities, and the other two were experts in the field of design.The last one was marketing expert, who contributed to point out the consumers' perspectives, with no design background.
The categorization of image syntaxes was conducted in three stages.In stage one, flash cards were made with all the integrated image syntaxes.They were categorized by experts with consensus derived from discussions in accordance with the similarities of the semantic meanings of the syntaxes.In stage two, the image syntaxes were further integrated in accordance with the similarities of images and the habitual similarities of the designers'' applications.In stage three, image naming was conducted with the materials categorized in stage two.In order to condense the large number of images derived after integration, the same group of experts was requested to choose the most appropriate syntax from each group of syntaxes.
This research invited six designers in different fields, including kitchenware, furniture, transportation, communication, and industrial machinery, to help fine-tune these syntaxes for convenient applicability in the designs of different products.These designers fell into the age group between 32 and 50, with at least 6 years of experience in design.During individual interviews, they were requested to pick the adjectives used in their areas and image syntaxes applicable in product design for the three major lifestyle clusters.During the interview, the features and pictures related to the three lifestyle clusters were introduced and provided for the designers' references.Then, the interviewees were requested to select the most frequently used image syntaxes in the three major lifestyle clusters.

Results and discussion
IMETI 2017

Investigation of lifestyle cluster
This research focus on the investigation of lifestyle clusters in Taiwan.At present, the database E-ICP Taiwan Lifestyle Bible (2014) constructed by Eastern Online Co Ltd provides very complete references to the lifestyle clusters and consumer behaviors in Taiwan.Therefore, this research consulted the databank and regarded the ten major lifestyle clusters as the sources of this project.From these ten lifestyle clusters, the research team has chosen three identifiable clusters with potential consuming ability as the targets.They is the "high-tech lifestyle cluster," "LOHAS lifestyle cluster," and "quality living lifestyle cluster," whose features are illustrated in Table 1

Collection of adjectives
The adjectives were collected from three perspectives, including the adjectives used on wrappings, the adjective collections used frequently by designers, and adjectives of different lifestyle clusters.

Collection of adjectives used frequently on product design
Online questionnaire was conducted to collect the image syntaxes frequently used on product design.The questionnaire was conducted at random, opened to net users via the internet.The testees were requested to fill out the adjectives used frequently in design.The totals of 27 questionnaires were sent out, with 1 invalid questionnaire and 27 valid ones.Falling between the age of 19 and 45, 14 of the testees were working people, and nine of them were students.Eight of them were males, and 19 females, with 12 of them had backgrounds in design, and 14 of them had no design background.The total number of adjectives collected was 160, 31 of them had repeated twice or more.Nine of the testees expressed that they often used the term "practical;" six suggested the term "simple"; and five raised the term "handy."For the other repetitions, please consult Table 2.In Table 1, the figures listed behind the adjectives were the numbers of testees that used the terms frequents.For example, the number (9) means that nine of the testees use the term frequently.Hi-tech(4)

Investigation results of applications of image syntaxes used in different areas of design
Designers from different areas picked the most frequently used images syntaxes from 122 items, listed above, applicable in three different lifestyle clustersthe high-tech lifestyle cluster, LOHAS lifestyle cluster, and quality living lifestyle cluster, as listed in

Investigation results of applications of image syntaxes used in the lifestyle clusters
The designers in different areas were requested to choose the image syntaxes used in different lifestyle clusters to obtain more accurate image syntaxes.The image syntaxes without targeting at any specific realm used by the designers in different areas were analyzed.The survey found that as shown in table 6.
According to Table 6, when constructing the construction of databank, the image syntaxes are arranged with the following guidelines:  Level 1: Used frequently by designers in various fields. Level 2: Used frequently by designers in various fields and sometimes by three lifestyle clusters. Level 3: Used by both designers in various fields and three lifestyle clusters. Level 4: Area-dependent in each lifestyle cluster.
4. When engaging in interdisciplinary and joint design, it is difficult to integrate the MATEC Web of Conferences 169, 01025 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201816901025IMETI 2017 MATEC Web of Conferences image boards prepared by different teams, exerting certain difficulties in cooperation or participation in exhibition or development.5.The appropriateness of the images or themes communicated through the graphics is not examined.

Table 1 .
: Ten major lifestyle clusters in Taiwan as shown in E-ICP 2014.The research design and statistics method of this table are results of the collaboration between Eastern Online and the Institute of Business Administration, NCCU.

Table 2 .
Results of the online investigation of the image syntaxes used frequently in design.

Table 5 Table 5 .
Image syntaxes frequently used by designers in different areas of design.