Xianghui Li

Public spaces are encountered through changing spatial configurations, yet evidence linking measurable route conditions to in situ emotional valence remains limited. This multi-site observational study examined associations between route-section image-semantic composition, physical spatial attributes, and five-category valence ratings. Twenty participants provided 378 valid ratings across 40 route sections in ten purposively selected public-space sites in Dalian, China, and Nomi and Kanazawa, Japan. Visual composition was derived from 433 quality-screened forward-facing photographs; physical measures included pavement-to-boundary width, element count, and soft-boundary condition and width. Cumulative-logit mixed models included participant and route-section random intercepts and adjusted for sampled setting. We assessed proportional-odds assumptions, 1000 setting-stratified site bootstraps, site-fixed within-site sensitivity, and leave-one-site-out prediction. No image-semantic balance retained an adjusted association. Greater conditional soft-boundary width showed a positive conventional association with more favourable valence in the primary model (β = 0.798; OR = 2.22; BH q < 0.001) and in the within-site analysis (OR = 1.56; BH q = 0.010). Although the conventional Hessian interval excluded the null (95% OR CI 1.62–3.04), the site-bootstrap β interval included zero (−0.003 to 1.404), and the physical-feature model did not improve held-out-site prediction. The finding is therefore a context-bound association requiring replication, not a causal or transferable design rule.

Crafts are products with both functional and aesthetic properties. Through emotional design, we can enhance not only the functionality of craft products, but also their aesthetic appeal. This study focused on ceramic teapots as a case study, selecting 20 samples from top-selling Chinese and Japanese ceramic teapots on JD.com. Employing machine learning methods, this study explored the relationship between the design features of ceramic teapots and the emotional preferences of young consumers. A classification model was developed and new teapots were designed for validation. The main findings are as follows: 1) The shape of the teapot lid, spout, handle, and body, as well as the color, decoration, and usability of the teapot, significantly influence young people’s emotional preferences. 2) Model evaluation revealed that the accuracies of the binary and ternary classification models established through random forest reached 91.0% and 81.3%, respectively. 3) The proportion of newly designed teapots that aligned with young people’s emotional preferences reached 91.1% (binary classification) and 64.5% (ternary classification), which is higher than the results of the original 20 teapots. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the relationship between the perceived image and design features of top-selling Chinese and Japanese ceramic teapots can effectively guide the design of ceramic teapot forms and successfully convey the intended image. The established model can be used to evaluate the emotional quality of newly designed teapots, providing data-driven support for designers to create ceramic teapots that resonate with market preferences.