Relation between the reality of digital and texture information using Onomatopoeia
Authors: Yang Wonseok , Akiba Misato 
Published: June 2023

In recent years, virtual spaces and metaverse using VR technology have been attracting attention from web and application infrastructure services, and it has become commonplace to represent real information in the digital world. The spread of multiple devices has made it possible for anyone to browse and collect information on the web. Against this background, many businesses are accelerating the shift to e-commerce, meaning information on the texture of objects must be read digitally, creating a gap between the impression of the web and reality. Therefore, information that is difficult to read from such visual information is increasingly supplemented by elements such as language, motion, and sound. Among these, a verbal presentation can accurately convey ambiguous information, and among the verbal elements, onomatopoeia can be used to express detailed information as well as impressions based on sensitivity. In a previous study, it was found that onomatopoeic impressions have an intimate relationship with texture information through a system that can quantitatively capture onomatopoeic impressions. With the proliferation of e-commerce, the use of onomatopoeia is considered effective in narrowing the gap between digital images and impressions.This study clarifies the extent to which users can capture texture impressions from images and how the presentation of onomatopoeia affects texture impressions.In this experiment, 12 samples were displayed on the PC screen and evaluated in six categories (slippery/sticky, flat/uneven, smooth/rough, soft/hard, warm/cold, and moist/dry). The evaluation was performed using the SD method. In addition, we presented the appropriate onomatopoeia for each sample and conducted the same evaluation to clarify how the impression changed with and without onomatopoeia. The results indicated that the impression was positive for all samples, with significant results for four samples (slippery, soft, sticky, and uneven). In particular, the impression was reversed for all samples except for the slippery sample, indicating that onomatopoeia had a significant effect on the impression of the object. These results suggest that the respondents had little experience with objects and could not narrow down their impressions to a single texture image; their impressions were low without onomatopoeia, and the presentation of onomatopoeia enhanced the texture image. In addition, there were six samples with high impressions (smooth, flat, warm, rough, hard, and dry) even without the presentation of onomatopoeia. The tendency for high impressions is thought to be that the respondents can read the mono impression from the image and imagine the tactile texture from the visual information because it is difficult to cause a shift in recognition.In conclusion, the presentation of onomatopoeia is effective when the texture of an object can be read as multiple impressions, and it was found to have a positive effect on the impression of the object. Therefore, we believe that ambiguous texture impressions can be expressed and the gap between reality and onomatopoeia can be narrowed by presenting linguistic information.