Incorporating affective customer needs for luxuriousness into product design attributes

Abstract

In a highly competitive market, customers' product affection is a critical factor to product success. However, understanding customers' affective needs is difficult to grasp; product design practitioners often misunderstand what customers really want. In this study we report our experience in developing and using an affective design framework that identified critical affective features customers have on products and are systematically incorporated into product design attributes. To identify key affective features such as luxuriousness, we utilized the Kansei engineering methodology. This approach consists of three steps: (1) selecting related affective features and product design attributes through a comprehensive literature survey, expert panel opinion, and focus group interviews; (2) conducting evaluation experiments; and (3) developing Kansei models using multivariate statistical analysis and analyzing critical product design attributes. To demonstrate applicability of the proposed affective design framework, 30 customers and 30 product design practitioners participated in an evaluation experiment for car crash pads, and 44 customers and 20 designers participated in an evaluation experiment for two interior room products (wallpapers and flooring materials). The evaluation experiments were conducted via systematically developed questionnaires consisting of a 7-point semantic differential scale and a 100-point magnitude estimation scale. The results of the experiments were analyzed using principal component regression and quantification theory type I method. Using the analyzed survey data, the relationship between luxuriousness and related affective features and product design attributes were identified. This relationship indicated that there was a significant difference in the perception of luxuriousness between customers and designers. Consequently, it is expected that the results of this study could provide a foundation for developing affective products. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Impact of Consumers’ Preference for Cultural and Creative Parks on the Attitude Behavior Model

“…Norman (2004) suggested that packaging and product design should be unique in order to attract consumers to creative products, and consider them particularly attractive. Bahn, Lee, Nam, and Yun (2009) indicated that the physical dimensions of products are the key attraction elements for people's emotions and attention. Thus, the uniqueness of cultural creative products should reinforce the attraction to Cultural and Creative Parks.…”

Affective evaluation of user impressions using virtual product prototyping

“…Users tend to want products that can meet both their functional requirements and affective needs beyond their satisfaction with basic requirements (Bahn et al, 2009;Chang et al, 2006;Jindo & Hirasago, 1997;Kwahk & Han, 2002;Lai et al, 2006;Logan, 1994). Moreover, in the era of global market competition, the important problem is not providing new product features but optimal product variations for different user segments (Ç akir, 2000;Kerttula et al, 1997;Tung et al, 2009;Zhang et al, Correspondence to: Cheol Lee, 599 Gwanak-ro, Kwanak Gu, Seoul 151-744, South Korea.…”

“…Its approach can be summarized into three steps: 1) use semantic differentials to capture customer's feeling and demand, 2) conduct a survey or experiment to investigate the relationship between words representing customer's feeling and design elements, and 3) perform relationship modeling using mathematical techniques. This approach has been applied to car interiors (Tanoue et al, 1997), car speedometers (Jindo & Hirasago, 1997), car design (Bahn et al, 2009;Chang et al, 2006), consumer electronic products , office chairs , and mobile phones Yun et al, 2003).…”

FuzEmotion as a backward kansei engineering tool

“…A robust design method could then be applied to enhance this quality by reducing the discrepancy between the actual consumer feeling and the target feeling, and by reducing the feeling ambiguity induced by the highly individualized characteristics of consumers. Bahn et al [12] developed an affective design framework that can identify critical affective features that customers have on products. Kansei engineering methodology was used to identify key affective features such as luxuriousness of a product.…”