Customer-oriented product design using an innovative integral scheme based on Kansei engineering and Kano model

Nowadays designers and manufacturers are extremely concerned with the perceived qualities of products. Oriented from the attractive qualities, designing products that satisfy consumer needs and tastes has become a major issue. However, customers' sensations about a product are multi-phases. Past studies about the product design did not consider customers' multi-facial sensations as well as overall satisfaction. Regarding this, this study attempts to develop an innovative integral scheme and procedure targeting on effectively designing a new product that could match customers' final overall satisfaction. The proposed integral scheme includes the Kano's model, the Kansei engineering (KE), the quantification theory type-I (QTI), and the BDCA creativity thinking procedure. Firstly, the Kano model is modified to link the customer satisfaction and customer preferences. Secondly, the KE together with QTI are used to establish the quantified relationship between design elements and customer preferences. Then, accordingly, a prototype of product with high customer satisfaction index (CSI) is selected as design reference. Thirdly, through the operation of a proposed innovative BDCA design procedure, a new product is performed. Finally, the new designed product is tested and an evaluation result with CSI value about 30% higher than the original prototype is obtained. The proposed integrated scheme may be used as a good guide to explore new products that satisfy customer's needs in overall aspects.