Interface effects of products and packaging materials

The interfacial function of products and packaging materials has two meanings: One layer refers to the physical and chemical characteristics of materials that produce physiological stimuli to people and form specific judgments, recognitions, and memories in the mind of the person. This attribute can make people form a pair of The visual impression of the product or intuitive use of the tips; the other layer refers to the social attributes of the material on the person's psychological effect, this effect can affect the customer's value of product judgments, purchase decisions and use of feelings. The purpose of this paper is to analyze various factors affecting the interface of materials and provide reference for enterprises to develop more reasonable product quality standards.

1 Quantifiable impact factors for material interface effects

1. 1 human senses

Most of the stimuli produced by products and packaging on the human senses are realized through materials. These stimuli must be within the specified range to ensure the safety and comfort of use. Therefore, standards should be set for these stimuli. Modern psychology and ergonomics studies divide human senses into visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, touch-pressure, temperature, and pain perceptions, and provide corresponding responses to external stimuli such as light, sound, smell, and pressure. The unit of measurement, such as the illumination of the unit of measurement of the visual, the color temperature, the decibel of the auditory unit of measure, and the two-point threshold of the unit of measurement of the touch pressure, etc., and tested the range of feelings and sensitivity of various human senses. These research results have been tested. It has become an important basis for formulating various quality standards.

People can recognize the strength, lightness, hardness, warmth, roughness, smoothness, dryness, or moistness of a material through the senses. Correctly considering these factors in the design of products and packaging will increase people's recognition of the quality and value of the product. Since there is a large difference in each person's perception ability, it is not easy to correctly consider these factors. The general practice is to determine the recognized safety and comfort range through tests or investigation teams' various stimuli, and quantify various sensory factors in the form of a series of product quality standards. For example, a company’s requirement for product surface roughness is to produce materials. The visual aesthetics and the quantification of tactile stimulus comfort.

1.2 Physical properties of materials

Different materials have different effects on people's feelings. For example, wood makes people feel warm and warm. Stainless steel makes people feel alienated and indifferent. This difference mainly comes from the physical and chemical properties of materials. The physical parameters of the material include hardness, density, light transmittance, refractive index, strength, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, etc.; the chemical properties are fire resistance grade, weather resistance, etc., and are the structural design and design selection of products and packaging. The important basis for this is also the most objective standard for the material interface.

Different components and labels of the same material often represent the quality grade of the material. In the product manufacturing standards, there are detailed provisions on the labeling and composition of the selected materials. Consumers with certain relevant knowledge can judge the quality and performance of the product on a case-by-case basis.

1. 3 Social Properties of Materials

When people observe and apply materials, they will judge their value and reach a consensus, thus forming the social attributes of the material. Products and packaging materials include both artificial and natural materials. The value of the former depends on raw material prices and processing costs. The value of the latter depends on the nature's reserves and how easy it is to obtain. People's judgment of the value of the material can be further extended to the recognition of the value of the product. Therefore, when designing products and packaging, we must carefully select materials and consider the market segmentation caused by different materials.

The quantifiable influence factor of the material interface function is the basic knowledge that the designer must master. It constitutes the objective basis of the product quality system and plays an important role in the design quality.

2 Non-quantitative influence factors of material interface

2. 1 person's physical condition and life experience

People feel different about materials, and this difference comes from emotions, physical conditions and differences in gender, age, and occupation [1]. For example, a frail elderly person or a fever patient may feel cold and uncomfortable when they hit the steel pipe headboard, while healthy young people may feel that it is cool and comfortable to hold. A Japanese designer designed the bar chair specifically. A section of steel pipe is used by young people who drink alcohol to dissipate heat; usually people, especially northerners, think that metal is cold to the touch, and the first consideration of steel mill workers when they pile up steel ingots and steel is whether they will be Burns, even when accidentally hitting a large piece of metallic material painted with a gray anticorrosive paint, can be retracted as quickly as if it were hot.

The difference in understanding of materials caused by human subjective differences cannot be measured and studied in a quantitative manner. However, designers can use the social statistics and their own life experiences to make qualitative judgments. This requires designers to have good Data analysis capabilities, but also have a wealth of life experience.

2. 2 Experience and Exercise

People can improve their sensory abilities through exercise. For example, people who regularly play mahjong can find out the points of a card. A trained salesperson can use handkerchief to measure the exact weight of a product. This phenomenon can also be actively applied to the design. Ordinary people can only use the fingertips to roughly determine the approximate roughness of the surface of the material. After training, the sense of blindness can be greatly improved. Therefore, the invention of Braille can be welcomed by blind people all over the world.

2. 3 Influence of use environment

People's perceptions of materials in different environments are different. This difference is generally caused by changes in materials with changes in the environment. Environmental factors that affect the environment include temperature, illumination, noise, and stability. For example, a chair made of metal feels cold in winter, but it feels hot in the summer. This is because the specific heat of the metal is small, it is easy to increase or decrease the temperature with the ambient temperature, and its good thermal conductivity can quickly exchange heat energy with the human body, enabling people to judge the cold and the hot in different seasons. Therefore, when designers choose materials, they must consider the differences and changes in the use environment to make the same kind of materials have different interface effects, so that the designed products can be better adapted to their use environment.

There is another manifestation of the influence of the environment, that is, the sensitivity of the disturbing senses even makes mistakes. For example, people who stay in the red environment for a long time mistakenly see the gray and white as green, and in a cold environment, the human touch becomes numb and the flexibility of the muscles also decreases. More in-depth research on this type of influence is ergonomics. Designers should make full use of the existing research results, find problems and research problems in the design practice, and summarize the different impacts of general environment and special environment on users. .

2.4 Traditional and Popular

People's psychological feelings about materials will be affected by tradition and popularity, manifested in the relative stability and variability of material value identification and aesthetic preferences. For example, fur has long been considered as a high-grade fabric. This is where tradition plays a role. Apparel fabrics should be introduced every year. Obsolete fabrics are immediately ignored. This is the impact of the epidemic. This phenomenon has almost become a law in the consumption field, that is, new materials are more expensive than general materials, and natural materials are more advanced than man-made materials. Therefore, as a designer, when considering tradition and popularity, we must also start from the specific circumstances of the target market to understand the general view of consumers in the region on material values ​​and aesthetics.

The non-quantitative impact factor of material interface is a design element that designers must consider. It is a subjective condition in the product innovation system and plays a huge role in the design innovation. There are two aspects of this non-quantification factor's influence on the designer. First, the personal experience of the designer and the personal knowledge of the environment caused by the environment, it is possible to form the designer's unique design style, and the second is the target consumer. Knowledge of materials and usage habits are very fresh for designers and help inspire designers.

3 Actual performance of material interface

The interfacial function of materials is the overall feeling of all the senses of the human body on the comprehensive performance of various properties of the material, and it presents an overall non-quantitative and complex nature in real life. For example, people's judgment on the hot and cold materials is affected by many factors. The first factor is the direction of heat exchange when the skin comes in contact with the material. When the material is colder than the skin, the skin releases heat and the person feels the material is cold. When the material is higher than the skin temperature, the skin absorbs heat. It will feel that the material is hot; the second factor is the speed of heat exchange, that is, the faster the material absorbs heat from the skin, the colder the material feels, and the faster the material releases heat to the skin, the more people feel it. The hotter the material. This explains why people generally think that metals are cooler than wood. After the metal and wood are left at room temperature (25°C) for several hours, the surface temperatures of the two materials are the same, but because the metal has a larger thermal conductivity than wood. If you can take away more calories from the body, you will come to a conclusion that the metal is colder. People's judgment on the hot and cold materials will also be affected by the color and texture of people and materials. For example, the sensitivity of the skin varies from person to person, adults and children are different, different parts of the skin sensitivity is different; warm color withered than the cold tone feeling hot; rough material surface and the skin between the air, and the theoretical thermal conductivity A certain gap [2].

4 Material interface design application in design

The interface effect of materials can be used by designers to express their understanding of the market positioning of products, strengthen and satisfy some psychological needs of consumers, and make products uniquely symbolic.

Taking the design of white wine packaging as an example, in addition to considering protection, facilitating transportation, providing bar code, origin, production date, etc., the designer also needs to fully recognize the specificity of the Chinese liquor consumer market, so that the selection of materials and surface treatment processes is in line with The overall requirements for product positioning and sales philosophy.

Many famous wines are located in the high-end banquet and gift market. Most of the packaging products are noble, elegant, gorgeous and even luxurious [3]. Most of the materials used are precious wood and high-grade silk boxes. With a sense of history [4], it conforms to the long-established product image that most famous wines advertise in advertisements; some famous wines pursue a sense of culture, and use bamboo, leather, fabrics and other special materials to increase the flavor of local culture and make packaging look elegant. Vulgarity caters to the respect and admiration of Chinese consumers for traditional culture; rigid cartons are the most common in white wine packaging, and the choice of paper and printing technology also takes into account the symbolic nature of the materials. Some mid to low-end products are designed to imitate high grades. Products using a variety of printing techniques, such as embossing, texture of skin texture can improve the product's "cultural flavor", "value sense", bronzing, scrub, film and metal coating technology can increase the value of the product Feelings, the emergence of these technologies has improved the paper material interface single role, greatly enriched the designer's performance.

5 Conclusion

Material is the material basis for the sensory and psychological communication between the product and the consumer. Therefore, the interface of the material is an important factor that must be considered by the product and packaging designer.

Reprinted from: Packaging Engineering