Effects of Design Factors of the Instrument Cluster Panel on Consumers ’ Affection

It is known from consumer surveys that the interior design of cars greatly influences on consumers’ affection. Most notably, the instrument panel which occupies the driver’s attention while driving would be one of the main components that affect consumer’s affection, but the designer does not often put due importance to this design component. The purpose of this study is to define consumers’ affection on the instrument cluster panel in terms of its design factors: color of panel lighting and layout of meters as independent factors as well as subjects’ gender. Semantic differentials or affective adjectives that are related to the instrument panel were first derived from surveys, existing studies and the available literature. Then, representative affective factors were drawn using factor analysis and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). Evaluation of the instrument panel was performed and analyzed by Taguchi’s parameter design to provide more robust results under various noise factors involved. The result of this study may provide not only a guideline for the instrument panel design but also a basis of understanding underlying consumer’s affection in terms of user-centered design.