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
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