Abstract: Traditional shadow play art carries profound and intricate meaning. Its characteristics represent the classics in traditional Chinese art, such as its image, decoration, color and pattern. Due to its failure to meet the aesthetics requirements and needs of modern society in terms of modes of performance and channels of dissemination, shadow play is dying out. At present, when it comes to the dissemination and application of shadow play art, our focus is placed on animation production, stage effect, costume design, graphic design, sculpture, and digital protection. However, regarding the application of cultural elements, it is currently a common practice to directly use the original elements of shadow play. There is a lack of the refinement of the symbols related from the user perspective and application to product design. By sampling analysis we selected representative samples of shadow play and used the perceptual engineering and statistical method to derive the shadow play characteristics factor. And then based on the user satisfaction analysis, we calculated the feature semantics of users’ expectations for the role of Dan in shadow play and extracted shadow play patterns through the eye movement experiment to make sensual evaluation of colors, thus making texture extraction and design evolution of the analytical results. Finally, we applied the results to the design of cultural creative products of lamps and lanterns, in order to verify the feasibility of this method and the design process.

Key words: shadow play art, user satisfaction, color pattern, eye movement experiment, cultural and creative product design