Kansei engineering

Kansei Engineering (Japanese: kansei kougaku, sign or aective engineering.

emotional / aective engineering) aims at the develop-
ment or improvement of products and services by trans-
lating the customers psychological feelings and needs
into the domain of product design (i.e. parameters). It 2 History of (Kansei) Aective En-
was founded by Mitsuo Nagamachi, Professor Emeritus gineering
of Hiroshima University (also former Dean of Hiroshima
International University and CEO of International Kan-
sei Design Institute). Kansei Engineering parametricallyNowadays, people want to use products that are func-
links the customers emotional responses (i.e. physical tional at the physical level, usable at the psychological
and psychological) to the properties and characteristicslevel and attractive at the subjective, emotional level. Af-
of a product or service. In consequence, products can befective engineering is the study of the interactions be-
designed to bring forward the intended feeling. tween the customer and the product at that third level. It
focuses on the relationships between the physical traits of
It has now been adopted as one of the topics for a product and its aective inuence on the user. Thanks
professional development by the Royal Statistical Soci- to this eld of research, it is possible to gain knowledge
ety. on how to design more attractive products and make the
customers satised.
Methods in Aective Engineering (or Kansei engineer-
1 Introduction ing) is one of the major areas of ergonomics (human fac-
tor engineering ). The study of integrating aective val-
Product design on todays markets has become increas- ues in artefacts is not new at all. Already in the 18th cen-
ingly complex since products contain more functions tury philosophers such as Baumgarten and Kant estab-
and have to meet increasing demands such as user- lished the area of aesthetics. In addition to pure practical
friendliness, manufacturability and ecological consider- values, artefacts always also had an aective component
ations. With a shortened product lifecycle, development . One example is jewellery found in excavations from the
costs are likely to increase. Since errors in the estimations stone ages. Also the period of Renaissance is a good ex-
of market trends can be very expensive, companies there- ample of that.
fore perform benchmarking studies that compare with In the middle of the 20th century, the idea of aesthetics
competitors on strategic, process, marketing, and prod- was deployed in scientic contexts. Charles E. Osgood
uct levels. However, success in a certain market segment developed his Semantic dierential method in which he
not only requires knowledge about the competitors and quantied the peoples perceptions of artefacts. Some
the performance of competing products, but also about years later, in 1960, Professors Shigeru Mizuno and Yoji
the impressions which a product leaves to the customer. Akao developed an engineering approach in order to con-
The latter requirement becomes much more important as nect peoples needs to product properties. This method
products and companies getting mature. Customers pur- was called Quality Function Deployment (QFD). An-
chase products basing on subjective terms such as brand other method, the Kano model, was developed in the
image, reputation, design, impression etc.. A large num- eld of quality in the early 1980s by Professor Noriaki
ber of manufacturers have started to consider such sub- Kano, of Tokyo University. Kanos model is used to es-
jective properties and to develop their products that con- tablish the importance of individual product features for
vey the company image. A reliable instrument is there- the customers satisfaction and hence it creates the op-
fore needed: an instrument which can predict the recep- timal requirement for process oriented product develop-
tion of a product on the market before the development ment activities. A pure marketing technique is Conjoint
costs become too large. Analysis. Conjoint analysis estimates the relative impor-
This demand has triggered the research dealing with the tance of a products attributes by analysing the consumers
translation of the customers subjective, hidden needs overall judgment of a product or service. A more artistic
into concrete products. Research is done foremost in method is called Semantic description of environments.
Asia, including Japan and Korea. In Europe a network It is mainly a tool for examining how a single person or a
has been forged under the 6th EU framework. This net- group of persons experience a certain (architectural) en-
work refers to the new research eld as emotional de- vironment.

1
2 4 A MODEL ON KANSEI ENGINEERING METHODOLOGY

Although all of these methods are concerned with sub- The expression Semantic Space was addressed for the rst
jective impact, none of them can translate this impact to time by Osgood et al.. He posed that every artifact can
design parameters suciently. This can, however, be ac- be described in a certain vector space dened by seman-
complished by Kansei Engineering. Kansei Engineering tic expressions (words). This is done by collecting a
(KE) has been used as a tool for aective engineering. It large number of words that describe the domain. Suit-
was developed in the early 70s in Japan and is now widely able sources are pertinent literature, commercials, man-
spread among Japanese companies. In the middle of the uals, specication list, experts etc. The number of the
90s, the method spread to the United States, but cultural words gathered varies according to the product, typically
dierences may have prevented the method to enfold its between 100 and 1000 words. In a second step the words
whole potential. are grouped using manual (e.g. Anity diagram, com-
pare: Bergman and Klefsj, 1994) or mathematical meth-
ods (e.g. factor and/or cluster analysis, compare: Ishi-
3 Kansei Engineering Procedure hara et al., 1998). Finally a few representing words are
selected from this spanning the Semantic Space. These
words are called Kansei words or Kansei Engineering
As mentioned above, Kansei Engineering can be consid-
words.
ered as a methodology within the research eld of Af-
fective Engineering. Some researchers have identied
the content of the methodology. Shimizu et al. state that Span the Space of Properties
Kansei Engineering is used as a tool for product devel-
opment and the basic principles behind it are the follow- The next step is to span the Space of Product Proper-
ing: identication of product properties and correlation ties, which is similar to the Semantic Space. The Space
between those properties and the design characteristics. of Product Properties collects products representing the
According to Nagasawa, one of the forerunners of Kansei domain, identies key features and selects product prop-
Engineering, there are three focal points in the method: erties for further evaluation. The collection of products
representing the domain is done from dierent sources
such as existing products, customer suggestions, possible
1. How to accurately understand consumer Kansei
technical solutions and design concepts etc. The key fea-
2. How to reect and translate Kansei understanding tures are found using specication lists for the products
into product design in question. To select properties for further evaluation,
a Pareto-diagram (compare Bergman and Klefsj, 1994)
3. How to create a system and organization for Kansei can assist the decision between important and less impor-
orientated design tant features. Synthesis In the synthesis step, the Seman-
tic Space and the Space of Properties are linked together,
as displayed in Figure 3. Compared to other methods
4 A Model on Kansei Engineering in Aective Engineering, Kansei Engineering is the only
Methodology method that can establish and quantify connections be-
tween abstract feelings and technical specications. For
every Kansei word a number of product properties are
In Japanese publications, dierent types of Kansei En- found, aecting the Kansei word.
gineering are identied and applied in various contexts.
Schtte examined dierent types of Kansei Engineering
and developed a general model covering the contents of Synthesis
Kansei Engineering.
The research into constructing these links has been a core
Choice of Domain part of Nagamachis work with Kansei Engineering in the
last few years. Nowadays, a number of dierent tools is
Domain in this context describes the overall idea behind available. Some of the most common tools are :
an assembly of products, i.e. the product type in general.
Choosing the domain includes the denition of the in- Category Identication
tended target group and user type, market-niche and type,
and the product group in question. Choosing and den- Regression Analysis /Quantication Theory Type I
ing the domain are carried out on existing products, con- Rough Sets Theory
cepts and on design solutions yet unknown. From this, a
domain description is formulated, serving as the basis for Genetic Algorithm
further evaluation. The process is necessary and has been
described by Schtte in detail in a couple of publications. Fuzzy Sets Theory

Span the Semantic Space Model building and Test of Validity


After doing the necessary stages, the nal step of valida-
tion remains. This is done in order to check if the pre-
diction model is reliable and realistic. However, in case
of prediction model failure, it is necessary to update the
Space of Properties and the Semantic Space, and conse-
quently rene the model. The process of renement is
dicult due to the shortage of methods. This shows the
need of new tools to be integrated. The existing tools can
partially be found in the previously mentioned methods
for the synthesis. Software Tools for Kansei Engineer-
ing Kansei Engineering has always been a statically and
mathematically advanced methodology. Most types re-
quire good expert knowledge and a reasonable amount of
experience to carry out the studies suciently. This has
also been the major obstacle for a widespread application
of Kansei Engineering. In order to facilitate application
some software packages have been developed in the re-
cent years, most of them in Japan. There are two dierent
types of software packages available: User consoles and
data collection and analysis tools. User consoles are soft-
ware programs that calculate and propose a product de-
sign based on the users subjective preferences (Kanseis).
However, such software requires a database that quanti-
es the connections between Kanseis and the combina-
tion of product attributes. For building such databases,
data collection and analysis tools can be used. This part of
the paper demonstrates some of the tools. There are many
more tools used in companies and universities, which
might not be available to the public. User consoles
5 Kansei Engineering software
As described above, Kansei data collection and analy-
sis is often complex and connected with statistical anal-
ysis. Depending on which synthesis method is used, dif-
ferent computer software is used. Kansei Engineering
Software (KESo) uses QT1 for linear analysis. The con-
cept of Kansei Engineering Software (KESo) Linkping
University in Sweden (www.kanseiengineering.net). The
software generates online questionnaires for collection of
Kansei raw-data
Another Software package (Kn6) was devleoped at the
Politechnical University of Valencia in Spain.
Both software packages improve the collection and evalu-
tation of Kansei data. In this way even users with no spe-
cialist compentence in advanced statistics can use Kansei
Engineering
6 See also
Aective computing
Gandhian engineering - for low cost, frugal, large
distribution product design.
3
Fahrvergngen
Japanese quality
Kansei Studies
7 References
Akao, Y., History of Quality Function Deployment
in Japan. International Academy for Quality Books
Series. Vol. 3. 1990: Hansa Publisher.
Baumgarten, A.G., Aesthetica. 1961, Hildesheim:
Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung.
ENGAGE, European Project on Engineering Emo-
tional Design Report of the State of the Art- Round
1. 2005: Valencia.
Green, E.P. and V. Rao, Conjoint Measurement for
Quantifying Judgemental data. Journal of Market-
ing Research, 1971: p. 61-68.
Grimsaeth Kjetil, Kansei Engineering Linking
Emotions and product features, 2005, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology.
Hirata Ricardo, Nagamachi Mitsuo, Ishihara
Shigekazu, Satisfying Emotional Needs of the Beer
Consumer through Kansei Engineering (Case Study
with Hiroshima International University Students),
7th International QMOD Conference 2004, Uni-
versity of Linkping and ITESM, Monterrey, NL,
pp. 219227, Mxico.
Hirata Ricardo, Nagamachi Mitsuo, Ishihara
Shigekazu, Nishino Tatsuo,Translation of customer
Kansei and emotional needs into products, 2nd In-
ternational Conference on Applied Human Factors
and Ergonomics (AHFEI) 2008, Las Vegas, USA.
Imamura, K., et al., An Application of Virtual Kan-
sei Engineering to Kitchen Design, in Kansei Engi-
neering 1, M. Nagamachi, Editor. 1997, Kaibundo
Publishing Co., Ltd.: Kure. p. 63-68.
Kano, N., N. Seraku, and F. Takahashi, Attractive
quality and must be quality, in Quality. 1984. p.
39-44.
Kant, I., Kritik av det rena frnuftet. 2004, Stock-
holm: Thales.
Kller, R., Semantisk Milj Beskrivning (SMB).
1975, Stockholm: Psykologifrlaget AB Liber
Tryck Stockholm.
Matsubara, Y. and M. Nagamachi, Kansei Virtual
Reality Technology and Evaluation on Kitchen De-
sign, in Manufacturing Agility and Hybrid Automa-
tion - 1, R.J. Koubek and W. Karwowski, Editors.
1996, IEA Press: Louisville, Kentucky, USA. p.
81-84.*
4 8
Mori, N., Rough set approach to product design so-
lution for the purposed Kansei. The Science of
Design Bulletin of the Japanese Society of Kansei
Engineering, 2002. 48(9): p. 85-94.
Nagamachi, M., Kansei Engineering. 1989, Tokyo:
Kaibundo Publishing Co. Ltd.
Nagamachi Mitsuo, Kansei Kogaku no Ohanashi
(Introduction to Kansei Engineering), Japan Stan-
dard Association, (in Japanese).
Nagamachi, Mitsuo, Kansei Engineering: A New
ergonomic consumer oriented technology for prod-
uct development, International Journal of Industrial
Ergonomics 15, 3-11, 1995.
Nagamachi Mitsuo, Kansei Engineering: A new
consumer oriented technology for product devel-
opment, in W. Karwowski & W.S. Morris (edi-
tors), The Occupational Ergonomics Handbook, pp.
18351848, 1999, CRC Press LLC, USA.
Nagamachi Mitsuo, Kansei Engineering, in N. Stan-
ton & A. Hedge et al., (editors), Handbook of Hu-
man Factors and Ergonomics Methods, pp. 83.1
83-5, 2004,CRC Press LLC, USA.
Nagamachi Mitsuo., ed., Nishino T., et al., Shohin
Kaihatsu to Kansei (Desarrrollo de producto y Kan-
sei), 2005, Kaibundo, Japan(in Japanese).
Nagamachi Mitsuo, Perspectives and New Trend of
Kansei / Aective Engineering, 1st European Con-
ference on Aective Design and Kansei Engineer-
ing & 10th QMOD Conference, 2007, University of
Linkoping and Lund University, Helsingborg, Sue-
cia.
Nagamachi, M., and Lokman, A.M., Kan-
sei/Aective Engineering. 2011, CRC Press LLC,
USA.
Nagamachi, M., and Lokman, A.M., Kansei Inno-
vation, Practical Design Applications for Product
and Service Development, 2015, CRC Press LLC,
USA.
Lokman, A.M., and Nagamachi, M., Kansei Engi-
neering; A Beginners Perspective, 2010, UPENA,
Malaysia.
Lokman, A.M., and Nagamachi, M., Validation of
Kansei Engineering Adoption In e-Commerce Web
Design. Kansei Engineering International, Vol.9
No.1, 2009, JSKE, Japan.
Lokman, A.M., Design & Emotion: The Kansei
Engineering Methodology, Malaysian Journal Of
Computing (MJOC), Vol1, pp 1-12. 2011, UP-
ENA.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Nishino, T., Exercises on Kansei Engineering.
2001: Hiroshima International University.
Nishino, T., et al. Internet Kansei Engineering
System with Basic Kansei Database and Genetic
Algorithm. in TQM and Human Factors. 1999.
Linkping, Sweden: Centre for Studies of Humans,
Technology and Organization.
Osgood, C.E., G.J. Suci, and P.H. Tannenbaum,
The measurement of meaning. 1957, Illinois: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press. 346.
Schtte, S., et al., Concepts, methods and tools
in Kansei Engineering. Theoretical Issues in Er-
gonomics Science, 2004. 5: p. 214-232
Schtte, R., Developing an Expert Program soft-
ware for Kansei Engineering, in Institute of Tech-
nology, Linkping University. 2006, Linkping
University: Linkping.
Shimizu, Y., et al., On-demand production system
of apparel on basis of Kansei engineering. Interna-
tional Journal of Clothing Science and Technology,
2004. 16(1/2): p. 32-42.
Shimizu, Y. and T. Jindo, A fuzzy logic analysis
method for evaluating human sensitivities. Interna-
tional Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 1995. 15:
p. 39-47.
8 External links
KANSEI Innovation (Hiroshima, JAPAN)
European Kansei Engineering group
Ph.D thesis on Kansei Engineering (europe)
Ph.D thesis on Website Emotional UX and Kansei
Engineering
The Japan Society of Kansei Engineering
The Malaysian Research Intensive Group for Kan-
sei/Aective Engineering
International Conference on Kansei Engineering &
Intelligent Systems KEIS
QFD Institute
 5

9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1 Text
Kansei engineering Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansei_engineering?oldid=694604630 Contributors: SimonP, Emperorbma,
Ed g2s, Utcursch, Shajikv, Rockfrosch, Yug, Chobot, Drewt, JLaTondre, Rwwww, Llauren, ChemGardener, SmackBot, Chris the speller,
Ckatz, Johnbibby, Hbgarou, Mqchen, Sdudah, Steel1943, TXiKiBoT, Chimin 07, Malcolmxl5, Thorkil9, Regushee, Samiam907, Uncle
Milty, Addbot, Lightbot, Yobot, KamikazeBot, AnomieBOT, Rhirata, Galman28, GrouchoBot, Eugene-elgato, PigFlu Oink, MastiBot,
Simsc21, ZroBot, ChuispastonBot, Nofear554, Simsc211, ChrisGualtieri, Mmj2love, Khazar2, Jcamachine, Paulo Jorge Tom, ChamithN
and Anonymous: 22

9.2 Images
File:Ambox_important.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg License: Public do-
main Contributors: Own work, based o of Image:Ambox scales.svg Original artist: Dsmurat (talk contribs)
File:Edit-clear.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Edit-clear.svg License: Public domain Contributors: The
Tango! Desktop Project. Original artist:
The people from the Tango! project. And according to the meta-data in the le, specically: Andreas Nilsson, and Jakub Steiner (although
minimally).
File:Unbalanced_scales.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Unbalanced_scales.svg License: Public do-
main Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

9.3 Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0