Affective quality is considered one of the most influential factors for the competitive power of consumer products. Since the human affective response is very abstract and comprehensive, it is very difficult to understand and manipulate the Affective Quality in scientific method. This study suggested the three-level hierarchical structure of the human affection according to the human affective response process, and subdivided the Affective Quality into three subordinate concepts such as 'Organoleptic Quality', 'Affective Quality Factor' and 'Overall Affective Quality.' Also the categories of adjectives which used to express the human affections for the three levels of affective structure were suggested. The results of this study could be used as a frame of systematic approach method to the Affective Quality. †

Objective: This study investigated the problems that could be faced with when engineers try to improve the affective quality using the DMAIC model. Background: Affective quality is considered one of the most influential factors for the competitive power of consumer products and many engineers make effort to improve the affective quality. Since the Six Sigma process is effective and wide-used method for quality improvement, it can also be used to improve the affective quality. However six sigma tools cannot be directly used for affective quality because of the subjective and qualitative characteristics of the human affection. Method: Investigate the goals, processes and key factors of DMAIC model and find the difficulties to use six sigma tools for the affective quality. Results: Most of the problems arise from measuring and quantifying the human affective response level and understanding the relationship between the human affective factors. Conclusion: Both the protocol for measuring human affection and the monitoring system to find the affective response change for the product or service are required. Application: The results of this study could be helpful for the engineers not specialized in ergonomics to improve the affective quality in systematic approach.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to propose the useful method to improve service affective quality by analyzing customer's service experiences and evaluating the satisfaction of the affective sensual responses to physical stimulus. Methods: While customers were experiencing the service, the customers evaluated the subjective satisfaction for the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory senses on a scale of-3 to 3 at each stage of the service process. The customers described the positive and negative feelings about each sensory stimulus, and explained the reason for the subjective evaluation scores. After experiencing the whole service, customers evaluated the affective quality of the whole service. Results: The proposed method was applied to coffee shops. 35 male and female college students were evaluated for 15 coffee shops in Korea. Multiple regression analysis revealed that auditory and olfactory senses had a greater impact on service affective satisfaction than other senses. Conclusion: This method is useful to identify the factors that affect customer's affective quality and to find the target to improve physical environment more easily than existing methods.