Summary of research article in your field

A Japanese engineering firm has created a new way of product development.  Kansei Engineering (KE) has created a consumer based technology to aid in the product development of engineering designs.  There are two ways to go about designing a product.  The product-out method means you design something based off of what you think people will like or what you like better.  The other way is called market-in.  The market-in strategy is where you do research and use consumer responses and opinions to design something.  It is essentially “asking” the consumer what they think is best.  Everyone has a slightly different idea as to what would make a better car, toy train, laptop, etc.  What KE has done is put those opinions into a few computers to find the “best” way to make a product.

 They were met with four main areas of concern.  The first one is how to figure out who the consumer feels about a product in terms of his or her own opinion of how the product should function or look.  The second was how to identify the characteristics of the products design. Third, how to create Kansei Engineering as a desirable technology. Finally, how to alter product design to both benefit society and people’s preferences and trends best.  Kansei Engineering took data from various surveys and consumer opinions written in magazines or articles in those areas.  To overcome these challenges, Kansei Engineering divided the procedure into three types.  Type I would categorize where the product was in terms of classifications set down by KE.  The example of how classification works for this was automobiles verse a couch.  One is technical considered a piece of heavy machinery, whereas the other is furniture.  They had to make this distinction with extreme care because people want different things to function or look differently than others.  For example, if I wanted a car that was just going to be used for me getting to and from work but if I wanted a new set of chairs for my living room where I know my kids are going to spill their grape juice then my choice is going to differ in function and longevity.  The first example that was given was about Mazda, a Japanese car company that wanted to make their driver feel more in control when they were driving.  Not necessarily in the literal sense but in the way that the car handles and responds to your inputs.  They had their computers create concepts and subconcepts of how to accomplish such a car.

The second type was Kansei Engineering Computer System (KES).  This was a completely computer bases system with another system inside of it to transfer the consumer’s opinion of a design to the design details that the computer would calculate.  This is really just a glorified database for engineers.  They broke it down into four separate databases.  The first one is called, Kansei database.  In Japan, they have what are called Kansei words, which are like keywords in a search.  They limit the search area and narrow down to something that the engineers know how to work with.  For example, a kansei word might be luxurious or cheap or colorful.  They gathered more than six hundred words from dialogue with salesmen and from industry magazines and articles.  This was then reduced to only a hundred kansei words.  They then made scales and created a number system to go along with multiple designs or concepts.  There was some fancy mathematics done to organize the numbers and designs within this database.  The second one is called, Image Database.  They used even fancier math to connect the kansei words with images.  It relates them using statistical information between images and words.  This allows them to identify what words match with what something should look like.  If a consumer wanted something to look “elegant” then the database would be able to connect the word elegant to visual images that would help engineers to create something that would look elegant to people.  The third database is called Knowledge-base.  This is a catalog of rules that are set by the high correlation between certain factors that will make up this concept design.  It finds the matching pair(s) of numbers from the other databases to figure out which one is more desirable.  The fourth and final database created by Kansei Engineering is called Design and color database.  This is the database where all the information ends up.  It creates designs using the color and design constraints as well as correlate the kansei words to the final concept designs.  It makes sure that everything that was input into the system was taken into account.  The overall procedure works like this. You input your image words that you want the design to incorporate. The databases check and try to recognize them. They then go through all the databases that were previously mentioned and the inference engine decides on what the design should incorporate.  This approach to finding out how to design future products will help to ensure that consumers get what they want.  The example used is about a person wanting to buy a house or a costume.  Maybe he or she wants the costume to be sexy and the house to be lovely.  You would then want different results based on the kansei words used to describe their perfect product.

The article’s last few pages are about the application of these technologies and approaches to engineering design challenges.  Currently, it is mostly only automobile companies that are using this new technique to its fullest.  Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi are using this information to make new passenger cars.  This method of production of design has proved extremely useful to those you have implemented it.  All the previously mentioned car companies created successful cars using it and it has even caught the attention of an American car manufacturer named Ford.  Ford’s CEO has claimed that it aided in the design of their new “Taurus” line of cars.  As well as cars, the KES has demonstrated great results in costume design, house design and entrance door design.  They demonstrated their design technique with the steering wheel of a car.  They took kansei words from repair shops and dealers as well as car magazines.  Fifty-nine design samples were created and shown to twenty-seven male and twenty-three female students.  The participants evaluated each slide and the designs were analyzed on the scales used in the databases.  They were then classified into thirteen different designs.  An example of the different designs would be like number of spokes and the pad face area and pad face design.  Overall, Kansei Engineering is a method of approach to product design with consumer opinion incorporated into the design elements.  It is based on computer science as well as ergonomics to employ an effective way of creating consumer products that will instantly be liked by said consumers.  There are currently only a few companies that are using this technology but it has shown tremendous results where is has been applied.  It is still in its young stages but the growing information that is utilized in its databases will make it grow seven stronger in the future.

Work Cited

Mitsuo Nagamachi, Kansei Engineering: A new ergonomic consumer-oriented technology for product development, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Volume 15, Issue 1, January 1995, Pages 3-11, ISSN 0169-8141, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0169-8141(94)00052-5.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0169814194000525)http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0169814194000525

To my future emploees

Dear Employees,

I’m sure you are all aware that we have Mrs. Doubtfire coming to visit to collaborate with our engineers on how to modify our human nourishment liquid transference apparatus.  I would like you all to treat her with the respect of a customer but keep in mind she going to be our partner for the time being.  She will be working mostly on the second floor.  I say this to give a heads up but also to warn the second floor that I know about the broom hockey that is going on in the break room.  With that said, if I or another executive find that happening while Mrs. Doubtfire is with us, I will make sure to take away the Pac man machine in the men’s bathroom as well as the Ms. Pac man machine in the women’s bathroom. 

As I said, she will be our partner for the duration of this project.  I would like you to treat her and her associates with the utmost respect but no need to tip toe around her.  She has already agreed to the terms and conditions of this agreement but that does not mean you can treat her like she is another employee of mine.  I want her to feel like she is at her own firm and that is only possible with the cooperation of everyone in this building. 

To dispel any and all rumors about her time and reason for being here, I would like to say that she is here strictly for business.  As stated previously, she is here to help work out the bugs in our human nourishment liquid transference apparatus.  This project has been a huge boost for this firm.  With its successful completion we will have our nose in the door, so to speak, for the Department of Defense contract to build a human nutrition material transportation device that will one day be used in all dining rooms to finally get the food from your plate to your mouth. We all will benefit from that contract so Mrs. Doubtfire’s assistance is vital if you all wish to keep your jobs next year. 

Sincerely, your boss

From the desk of Joshua Lendi, CEO of Major Pain Products

How would you find out how writing works in your field? 1.22.14

To understand writing from an engineering point of view, then I would tell you to go ask a Mechanical Engineering professor.  They often have been in the field or have done research in the field.  Engineering writing in general is very to the point with not a lot of twists and turns.  They will state the problem at hand, give you an approach to the problem that he/she used. Then, they would explain why they used this method.  Next, they would solve the problem and tell you the technical side of their solution.  Finally, they would wrap it up with a conclusion about the results that they yielded and why that solution makes sense.  They also might pose questions for the reader about future developments in the field and where research opportunities lay.

The Reading Games_thought piece

Admittedly, when I first started reading this my mind went somewhere else. I read this at 9:30 in the morning before my daily dose of caffeine.  I found myself doing everything she described herself doing when she had to read her book on the Chinese revolution.  I spaced out, got sleepy and started questioning why I had to do this.  I always hate having to read for school.  I was that kid in high school English class who wouldn’t read the assigned chapters for homework and then end up figuring out the details of what happened in those chapters during class discussion.  This worked fairly well for me up until the last half of junior year and senior year.  I was never a fast reader and in fact reading to understand in a short amount of time was always my worst skill.  It probably still is.  Reading about how to read academic writing makes me feel more comfortable going forward because I now know how to “read smarter, not harder”. At my high school, we have to write a research paper sophomore and junior year about a social science topic, as well as write one senior year for our English class.  The social science papers were tricky because as a 16 or 17 year old kid, who never had been exposed to academic writing, reading these journals that were at a reading level beyond mine was hard.  I would often just skim the material to see if it had useful information, or I would look at the title to see if it sounded good.  During senior year, the paper we had to write was more opinionated.  The struggle lied in figuring out which ones were creditable and which were not.  Often times, we just google something to find an answer, but when it comes to very specific educational topics; google sucks.  I know for a fact that google tracks your history on what you type into it and it will give you somewhat different results based on what you consistently type into it.  So, you will get slightly different results from someone else because of what you normally look up.  I personally think that this is a real problem for the future.  When we live in the information age, but the information that is more easily accessed is which celebrity is dating who then we have a problem.  Now that I am exposed to academic writing, I know what to expect and I also am relatively good at figuring out what the article is talking about with having limited knowledge on the subject.  Overall, I really enjoyed this article, although it was slow going at first.  It has many useful tips that I would love to have known back in high school for those research papers.  

Portrait of a writer

Son, boyfriend, college student, teenager, future engineer are most the ways I describe myself when I think of who I am.  And out of the other ways that I would define myself that are not listed there, writer would not be in there, or it would be way at the bottom being crushed by everything else.  Writing is not a strong suit of mine, and it never really was.  I was always one of those students who hated English classes because I felt that they were teaching me things that I already knew.  During high school, my teachers would always, in my opinion, over analyze something in the text we were reading.  I found this annoying because while the book said that the curtain was blue; my English teacher would give a 15 minute speech about how the blue symbolizes depression and that the author was going through a tough time because it was rumored that their dog had died 2 days prior to them writing this chapter.

The over analytical teacher fueled my dislike of English even more.  This led me to give little to no effort in class.  I knew that I could write a 5 page paper about how to increase the horsepower of a riding lawnmower engine so that you can make a drag racer in your back yard, so I saw no need for me to have to learn what the proper use of a semicolon, dash or any other less common form of punctuation.  I just accepted that my creative writing skills would always be below the expectation for my grade level. 

As I said, I could talk all day about technical engineering jargon but fell short of academic writing.  I figured since I wanted to major in engineering I would never need to use academic writing.  I took engineering and shop classes all throughout high school so my technical writing skills grew.  I fueled that part because I felt that I would never be good enough for academic writing nor would I ever use it.

My writing is very straight forward and gets to the point.  I often start out with introducing the topic in a formal way and then give my opinion about it.  I would probably then give you a metaphor or example as to my line of thinking. And if all goes like it does every time then I will have fallen short of the minimum length for that particular assignment.  I will reread my explanation and add as much bullshit as I can into it so that it meets the minimum requirements. My creative papers tend to be more on the short side but I also try to condense sentences where possible.  I was taught that if I can say something in one page them why write three pages explaining more than I have to.  In my experience people tend to get lost or become uninterested in what you are talking about the longer you go on for.

As well as being straight to the point, I understand that my writing probably does not follow a ordinary thought path.  I think more in pictures than I do in words.  I have a hard time explaining how something works so I normally use a diagram or an object as a representation of whatever it is I am explaining.  I know I need lots of revisions on my papers.  I tend to write whatever comes to my mind while I am typing and I know that is not always a good thing. 

I try to separate my technical writing from my creative writing.  I do this by ignoring the inner critic that we talked about but this is difficult because my inner critic does not tell me that I am not good enough to write this but rather it tells me that English is stupid and you should just write this paper to get it over with.  I find myself taking more time to carefully choose my words and revise my work when it does not have to do with English.  For example, I know that I am going to get to the third page of this Word document and think “it’s finally over”.  I’m not quite sure how to break this. It occurs to me that as I get closer to the end of a paper, I revisit my thoughts and reword them in fancy ways to make it sound like I know what I am talking about.  While I was a kid, I would always listen to other people’s conversations, mostly because I am not a very social person.  This helps me out a lot now because if I have no idea what someone is talking about or if I zone out during the conversation then I can still play it off like I know what they said. 

I know that I am a good technical writer with the ability to give concise instructions on how to do something.  There are lots of ways to get your idea across to someone but there are fewer ways to do in an entertaining and informative way.  I try to give you the highlights of something so that I do not waste my time or your time explaining something that you do not care about or do not understand.  Another reason why I am so brief, is that I want to be able to prove to myself that I know something.  I believe it was Albert Einstein that said “if you cannot explain something simple enough, then you do not understand it well enough”.  If I can explain the concepts of physics to you in two sentences that you and I both understand, then why take unnecessary ways of getting there.  Three rights make a left so why not make a left turn to being with. 

Overall, I understand that I am a technical writer at heart with a deep seeded animosity towards academic writing and all the teachers who criticized my writing to no end.  I know that I could probably improve my writing overall but as long as I keep getting the point across then I really feel no need to change.  I write papers to get a grade and nothing more.  If you gave me the exact same assignment in a social science class verse an English class, I will have put more effort into the social science paper than the English paper.  With that being said,  I do not hate English nor do I hate reading or writing papers, but there is always that little voice telling me to just get it done and over with so you can turn it in and get a grade.  I am just trying to be honest to my teacher and, more importantly, to myself.

First assignment - Thought Piece

I personally found the article to be well written as well as inspirational overall.  The whole time I was reading this, my mind kept going to an anime show called Naruto.  I'm not sure if you know what it is so i'll give a quick summation of it.  It is set in japan where all the major nations have ninja who protect and serve as their military.  Every great nation has, what they call, a tailed-beast and to control the beast they seal it inside a special person from each village. This boy, Naruto, has the nine tailed fox sealed inside of him, so he is ostracized as a kid but ends up becoming a great ninja. The moment I kept thinking about was when Naruto battles the nine tailed fox for control inside of his mind.  He wants to be able to control the beast so that it's hatred will not destroy Naruto.  In many ways, I feel that we all have a demon inside our head that gets us down and makes us feel like complete shit.  And much like Naruto, I feel as though we all have to battle that demon eventually in order to be happy.  Some have already beat it but some of us are still at war with it.  I just want them to know that you can beat it and when you do it will be the greatest day of your life.  Everyone gets down and everyone will hit a low point some time, but it's not about how far down you go, rather how many times you get back up.  There is a Chinese proverb that goes like "fall down seven, stand up eight".  It basically just means that whenever you get knocked on your ass, make sure you pick yourself back up. Those were my thoughts about the article. Let me know yours.