ABSTRACT
A semantic differential study is reported, to establish the subjective effects of combining tactile and visual stimuli. Respondents were asked to complete semantic differential questionnaires after touching surface textures; after touching surface textures printed over images; and after looking at but not touching the images. The visual items appear to dominate the responses to the combined stimuli in PC1 and the tactile items dominate more of the responses to the combined stimuli in PC2. The stimuli include, amongst others, visual cues such as branding and colour, and tactile cues such as surface texture. In some cases, the combined stimuli score is dominated by one or other of the visual and tactile stimuli. But in others, if one stimulus is incongruent to the other, a clear dilution of score occurs. For surfaces that are intended to be both seen and touched, both their visual and tactile effects need to be considered.
