ABSTRACT
Projective mapping was introduced to the sensory science eld by 1994. It was presented as a rapid approach to collect (dis)similarities within a set of products, with a more holistic sample approach. Thompson and MacFie (1983) highlighted the important challenges of conventional descriptive evaluation: the employment of analytic proles, when perception is in fact thought to be holistic. The projective mapping technique in various forms applied the idea of “placing” psychology (Dun-Rankin 1983; Risvik et al. 1994), as simultaneously presented samples had to be projected within a 2D area framed by a sheet of paper. Assessors were introduced to the projective mapping technique, but had no formal training. Risvik et al. (1994) originally supplied assessors with a rectangular paper sheet and the sample set and instructed them to place samples perceived as similar close to each other and samples perceived different further apart. By 2003, the projective mapping variant Napping was introduced, which applied the same evaluation instructions as projective mapping (Pagès 2003, 2005). However, Napping assumed that a set of data analysis instructions were followed and hence could be seen as a more dened case of projective mapping (Dehlholm 2012; Dehlholm et al. 2012b). The ultra-ash proling method (Pagès 2003) was normally considered to constitute the collection of the assessors’ semantic descriptions of products as add-on methodology for Napping. With inspiration from sorting, the sorted Napping variation (Pagès et al. 2010) suggested to replace ultra-ash prole by a description of groupings of projected products. As a recent method variation, the “global” (normal) Napping was seen in opposition to the “partial” Napping, where assessors were guided by, for example, sensory modalities (Pfeiffer and Gilbert 2008; Dehlholm 2012; Dehlholm et al. 2012b). An even faster evaluation approach has been implemented as the consensus Napping for group judgments, but it did not show reliable results for
assessors untrained in the methodology (Dehlholm 2012). Several authors have recently compared projective mapping with other rapid descriptive methods and highlighted the technique as successfully applied for various purposes (Ares et al. 2010, 2011; Nestrud and Lawless 2010; Albert et al. 2011; Dehlholm 2012; Dehlholm et al. 2012a,b; Valentin et al. 2012; Varela and Ares 2012). Today, the technique has been broadly included into sensory software enabling computer screens, tablets, and other mobile devices to constitute the projective response area.
