Measuring naturalness - building bridges between measurement and perception

The way in which we perceive materials and objects affects us, and the decisions we make, every day, and in many different ways. We decide whether to buy clothes based on their 'look' and 'feel'; we decide whether to eat a meal based on its 'look', 'smell' and 'taste'; we listen to music because we 'like the sound'. There is therefore a lot of interest from Industry in being able to measure physical properties to make predictions of our subjective perception of a material or object. But is this really possible?

Recording Crown Copyright 2006. Reproduced by permission of the Controller of HMSO and Queen's Printer for Scotland. Clothing image Copyright Marks and Spencer.