A correlation handling strategy for consumer-oriented emotional design of new products

Field: Engineering (Physical Sciences)

In recent years, many products’ design emphasis has shifted from products, e.g., physical structure and assembly procedures, to user experiences gained from interacting with the products, viz. user-centered design, in order to satisfy the more discerning eyes of consumers. There have been studies on users’ experience tackling problems in various perspectives. Among them, emotional product design is of great importance, due to its ability to deal with a consumer’s emotional requirements in new product development (NPD). Emotional product design may significantly increase the competitive edge for companies in marketplaces. Various concepts of emotional product design have been developed, e.g., product aesthetics, product emotion, product attachment, and affective meaning. Amongst these concepts, Kansei engineering has been widely advocated because of its effectiveness and reliability in handling consumer emotional requirements. However, some of the key issues in Kansei engineering have not been addressed well. For example, how can we capture human emotions so that consumers’ emotional requirements can be defined for targeted development? How can we identify the relationships between products and emotional needs? Moreover, how can a product be improved to better fit consumers’ emotional needs? This research aims at realizing a product design system for emotional effect (PDSEE) to facilitate emotional design processes. The PDSEE comprises three modules, namely, an emotional needs management module (ENMM), a product classification module (PCM), and a product re-configuration module (PRM). Briefly, PDSEE captures and manipulates customer emotions in the first module; examines and establishes the relationship between the product and emotion in the second module; and addresses and analyzes product configurations in the third module. Three case studies on battery drill design, perfume bottle design, and graffiti design on notebooks are employed to illustrate and to validate the proposed approach via ENMM, PCM, PRM, respectively. The capability of the prototype PDSEE was tested and validated using a case study from the jewelry industry. The results of the case study show that the framework can handle a large number of Kansei adjectives simultaneously in the study. It also demonstrates that the prototype PDSEE can address relationships between Kansei and products in different extent. Moreover, it shows that the proposed framework can be used by product designers to identify key product parameters for designing new products with better emotional impacts. In summary, this work has made contributions to: 1) the management of Kansei adjectives in Kansei study; 2) the refinement of Kansei-product relationships in Kansei experiments; and 3) the development of product attributes in emotional product design. Therefore, the current work has the potential to handle various forms of customers’ emotional needs, bridge Kansei requirements to more products and services, and pinpoint a causal relationship between key physical parameters and consumers’ feelings. The possibility of extending the current work to a broader scope will merit further exploration.