A Study on the Visual and Tactile Perception of Oriented Strand Board Combined with Consumer-Preference Analysis

Abstract

This study on oriented strand board (OSB) wood doors with veneer as the door leaf aimed to investigate consumers’ preference for visual–tactile elements of OSB. First, we utilized the questionnaire and interview methods to extract specific elements as experimental variables for this study. Then, through subjective evaluation experiments and eye-movement experiments, as well as correlation analyses of the experimental results, we explored the relationship between the slice size, gloss, and color of oriented strand boards and consumers’ visual preferences and summarized the eye-movement indexes that can represent consumers’ aesthetic evaluation of the visual elements of oriented strand boards. Unidirectional haptic experiments analyzed the relationships between the slice size, gloss, and roughness of the oriented strand boards and consumers’ haptic preferences. The results showed that, visually, chip size and surface gloss had little effect on people’s subjective aesthetic evaluations of oriented strand-board wood doors. At the same time, the quantitative mean pupil diameter could represent consumers’ aesthetic evaluations of oriented strand boards. Regarding haptics, the size of the wood chips on the surface of the oriented strand-board specimens did not significantly correlate with participants’ haptic preferences. All participants’ tactile preferences for the unpainted specimens were positively correlated with the fineness of sanding. The visual and tactile effects presented on the surface of an object are essential factors that influence the perception of a material. Oriented strand board (OSB) has excellent advantages in providing a healthy and environmentally friendly living environment, so exploring the visual and tactile perception of OSB from the consumer’s point of view plays a vital role in promoting the use of OSB. The visual–tactile experimental results and the conclusions drawn from the analysis in this study can enable OSB to provide more opinions and potential information from consumers for the design of OSB wooden doors under the premise of conforming to the actual production and meeting the quality standards so that the designed and produced OSB wooden doors can satisfy the users’ preferences based on safety and stability.