Objective  As a national intangible cultural heritage unique to southern Fujian, Yongchun paper weaving painting contains deep regional cultural connotations with its artistic characteristics of “weaving warp and weft, and real and imaginary”. Currently, the research on it focuses on the historical traceability and process recovery, while there is an obvious gap in the research on its cross-media transformation. Leather products have both practical and decorative properties, which can be combined with Yongchun paper weaving painting technology and cultural genes to exhibit unique design value. However, the existing research on the integration of traditional culture and leather products has problems such as strong design subjectivity and single evaluation system. Therefore, it is important to scientifically assess the application value of these crafts and cultural genes in the design of leather products, generate the optimal design program, and provide a new path for the innovative transformation of non-heritage elements.

Methods  First of all, through literature review and field investigation, the explicit cultural genes (e.g., modeling, color) and implicit cultural genes (e.g., semantics, style) of Yongchun paper weaving painting are refined, and a hierarchical analysis structure model is constructed. A decision-making team composed of 12 experts, including cultural and creative design experts, leather sculpture craftsmen, paper weaving painting inheritors and market experts is invited to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to quantitatively rate the suitability of the 14 cultural gene factors with the design of leather cultural and creative products as well as the demand of consumers and users, and the comprehensive weights are then calculated and rank them. Secondly, the core factors with higher weights are selected, and by combining with artificial intelligence technology, the weaving process of paper weaving painting is transformed into the design language of leather products. This process generates three leather cultural and creative product programs, each with a core focus on plant modeling, landscape modeling and character modeling, respectively. Finally, the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to construct a weighted standardized evaluation matrix, calculate the relative closeness of each solution, and screen the best design solutions.

Results and Discussions  According to the comprehensive ranking of AHP, the factors with the highest comprehensive weights in each criterion layer are extracted, and artificial intelligence technology is used to generate three solutions. After the evaluation of TOPSIS, Program 1, “Lotus Rhyme and Wish”, has the highest relative proximity (0.980), and is identified as the best design solution; Program 2, “Danshan Ink” (closeness coefficient 0.943) and Program 3 “Ruifurenxiang” (closeness coefficient 0.915) are ranked in the backward order.

Conclusions  The combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution effectively solves the problem of strong subjectivity and imperfect evaluation system in the application of traditional cultural elements in design. This approach provides a scientific and objective quantitative decision-making basis for the application of Yongchun paper weaving painting cultural genes in the design of leather products, which promotes the living inheritance of Yongchun paper weaving painting, and also provides a reference methodology for the fusion and innovation of other traditional cultural genes and modern design.