Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173

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Computers & Industrial Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caie

Data-driven innovation to capture user-experience product design: An

empirical study for notebook visual aesthetics design
Chen-Fu Chien a,⇑, Rhoann Kerh a, Kuo-Yi Lin b, Annie Pei-I Yu c
a
Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
b
Department of Business Administration, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan
c
Department of Business Administration, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi 62102, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Visual aesthetics is a critical factor of new product design to capture customer attention and create pos-
Received 30 July 2015 itive emotional reaction to enhance the customer satisfaction. Understanding user preferences in terms of
Received in revised form 11 May 2016 product visual aesthetics and the factors affecting user experience (UX) is crucial for the product design-
Accepted 4 July 2016
ers to enhance customer satisfaction. However, few studies have been done to identify the relationship
Available online 5 July 2016
between product characteristics of visual aesthetics and the UX reaction. This study aims to propose a
framework of data-driven product design for capturing product visual aesthetics UX to effectively iden-
Keywords:
tify the useful design concepts from consumer preferences to consumer response. In order to validate the
User experience
Data-driven innovation
proposed framework, an empirical study in cooperation with a world leading electronics manufacturing
Visual aesthetics design service (EMS) company was conducted. The derived rules can assist the designers to design notebook
Rough set theory visual aesthetics and develop promotion strategies to corresponding segments of different customers.
Notebook The results have shown the practical feasibility of the proposed framework that has been implemented
Data mining in this case company.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the distinctiveness of products. Accordingly, visual product new-

With the emergence of rapidly developed technology and the
extensive application of that technology, several products have
been launched for different purposes within different customer
segments. Within the consumer electronic product industry, the
notebook computer product design and manufacturing is one of
the most competitive domains. To gain the competitive edge, deliv-
ering product designs that meet the customer needs is the key to
succeed in the turbulent global market. Thus, consumer electronics
manufacturers attempt to customize the design of the notebook
product to satisfy a wide array of customer needs. Among the sub-
stantial impact elements of product design, product visual aesthet-
ics is highly relevant to product performance and users judgment
(Hoegg & Alba, 2011). In general, users evaluate the novelty of
the product and get their first impression from the product’s visual
aesthetics before accessing the functional aspects of products
(Radford & Bloch, 2011). In addition, purchasing decisions are typ-
ically made regarding to the users’ judgment of visual novelty and
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Industrial Engineering & Engineering
Management, National Tsing Hua University, 101 Section 2, Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu
30013, Taiwan.
E-mail address: cfchien@mx.nthu.edu.tw (C.-F. Chien).
ness has become a central determinant of new product adoption.
To compete in the evolving market, notebook products should dif-
ferentiate their visual aesthetics according to UX. UX is the reaction
of emotions, demands and feeling of users with the respect to the
use of the product in various scenarios and screenplay (Creusen,
2011; Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2006). Users’ sensation feedback
after adopting products contributes their inclination of satisfactory
products (Chien, Lin, & Yu, 2014; Sundar, Bellur, Oh, Xu, & Jia,
2013). Thus, referring UX during the new product design process
can deliver the product in line with the expectation of users.
Focusing on the realistic need, this study aims to develop a
data-driven product design framework for capturing product
visual aesthetics UX. The derived information regarding UX and
important product characteristics of visual aesthetics can assist
product designer to identify potentially successful product visual
aesthetics concepts. Furthermore, the clarified factors may help
the manufacturers to target specific customer segment to better
cater to the needs of the segment and gain the core competence.
However, in the notebook manufacturing companies, product
designers often encounter the pressure of time to market, and
thereby rely on their own experience and the market report pro-
vided by the upstream brand name firms to design the products.
In this case, product designers face challenges to find appropriate

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2016.07.006
0360-8352/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173
visual aesthetics design concepts effectively. Thus, it is crucial to
identify positive UX toward product visual aesthetics in order to
obtain potentially useful information from customer voices to
assist timely decision-making, especially for short life cycle prod-
ucts and in the severe competitive consumer electronics industry.
However, collecting customer voices through the investigation of
questionnaires is hard to elicit UX. In order to obtain the critical
insight of customer voices, a systematic method to extract the
important rules is required for the data analysis. Data mining is
the multidisciplinary tool for discovering relation between users’
sensation and the factors by deriving simple rules to discover valu-
able patterns driven by data. In particular, rough set theory (RST)
(Pawlak, 1982) has been proposed to apply in the field of product
design (Chien et al., 2014; Shao, Wang, Li, & Feng, 2006; Shi, Sun,
& Xu, 2012; Zhai, Khoo, & Zhong, 2009). This approach can be
applied specifically when the characteristic of information is
imprecise, uncertain, and vague (Yang, Yang, Wu, & Yu, 2008).
However, little research has been conducted for product visual aes-
thetics and consumers’ purchase intention. In particular, RST was
developed to explore the data of customer voices and detect the
relationship hidden in data for decision makers to evaluate various
products appearance features in the product design and prototype
stage. To evaluate the validity of the proposed approach, an empir-
ical study was conducted for a leading consumer electronics man-
ufacturing company in Taiwan to demonstrate the practical
feasibility of this framework.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
describes the fundamentals of this approach and reviews related
studies. Section 3 addresses the proposed approach. Section 4 eval-
uates this approach with the empirical data for validation. Section 5
provides the discussion of this study. Section 6 concludes with con-
tributions and future research directions.
2. Fundamentals
2.1. Data mining and RST
As the development of information technology, a massive
amount of data has been collected automatically or semi-
automatically as the resources for data mining and knowledge dis-
covery. Data mining is an approach that combines several branches
of learning expertise for discovering potentially useful patterns
(Berry & Linoff, 2004). Decision makers may find valuable knowl-
edge concealed in the raw data to enhance their decision quality.
Many studies have been done to develop data mining methodolo-
gies to solve various problems in different domains, including yield
enhancement (Chien, Hsu, & Chen, 2013; Chien, Wang, & Cheng,
2007; Hsu, Chien, Lin, & Chien, 2010), manufacturing management
(Chien & Hsu, 2006; Kuo, Chien, & Chen, 2011; Kusiak, 2006), per-
sonnel selection (Chen & Chien, 2011; Chien & Chen, 2008;
Strohmeier & Piazza, 2013), customer behavior analysis (Altintas
& Trick, 2014; Baumann, Elliott, & Burton, 2012; Chen, Chiu, &
Table 1
Comparison of data-mining studies for design.
Approach Research aims
Association rules Identified product configurations to control product diversity and complexity
Created design guidelines
Customized design features
Decision tree Optimized new product portfolio design
Statistical hypothesis Obtained engineering specifications
Rough set theory Developed a model based on rough set theory to compare various operating
systems of different tablets to derive user preference
Text mining Constructed a knowledge-based system to support notable product features
design and development process
163
Chang, 2005), marketing (Ayetiran & Adeyemo, 2012; D’Haen,
Van den Poel, & Thorleuchter, 2013; Khan, 2014), and product
design (Li, Nahar, & Fung, 2015; Okudan, Chiu, & Kim, 2013;
Sangelkar, Cowen, & McAdams, 2012; Sangelkar & McAdams,
2013; Song & Kusiak, 2009; Tucker & Kim, 2009).
In terms of product design, data mining techniques have been
applied to improve the product design quality and extracting the
prototype features. The comparison of data-mining techniques
and relevant studies for data mining in design were shown as
Table 1.
However, only few studies have been undertaken to develop an
assessment system for evaluating product features and UX based
on data mining approach. In particular, Chien et al. (2014)
employed rough set theory to propose a UX- based data mining
model for tablet operation system design. Lin, Chien, and Kerh
(2016) proposed UNISON framework for data-driven innovation
to extract UX and conducted an empirical study for wearable
devices product design. Feng, Yangjian, and Jiao (2014) also devel-
oped a UX decision-making model for aircraft cabin interior design
based on hierarchical Bayesian analysis.
The RST is an approach of data mining which extracts associa-
tion rules to support decisions with simple, understandable, and
practical rules under uncertainty and vagueness. Apart from the
traditional statistical methods, the unneeded assumption of vari-
ables independence and the data distribution normality is the
advantage of RST. In addition, the ‘‘IF-THEN rules” are easy to inter-
pret and understand practically, and can be applied forthright to
categorical type of data. Thus, RST is particularly suitable and use-
ful for the applications of product design features decision. RST has
been applied in several fields such as manufacturing management
(Hou & Huang, 2004; Hsu et al., 2010; Kusiak, 2001; Zhai, Khoo, &
Fok, 2002), medical decision making (Kusiak, Kern, Kernstine, &
Tseng, 2000), fault location identification (Peng, Chien, & Tseng,
2004), talent recruiting (Chien & Chen, 2007), marketing and cus-
tomer research (Li, Tang, Chin, Han, & Luo, 2012; Liou & Tzeng,
2010; Thanh-Trung, Viet-Long Huu, & Phi-Khu, 2012), and product
features design (Shao et al., 2006; Shi et al., 2012). However, little
research has been done for the design of product visual aesthetics.
The definitions of terminology and notations for RST are described
as follows.
2.2. Information system
In the concept of RST, each row stands for an object (e.g. UX
data for product visual aesthetics) and each column stands for an
attribute in a decision table. The attributes can be further classified
into the attributes of condition and decision. User information and
cognition that have conceivable association with user’s decisions
were contained in the condition attributes. Hence, insights were
depicted in the information system S, and can be defined as
follows:
S ¼ ðU; A; V; f Þ ð1Þ
Authors (year)
Song and Kusiak (2009)
Liao, Hsieh, and Huang (2008) and Sangelkar et al. (2012)
Li et al. (2015)
Tucker and Kim (2009) and Bae and Kim (2011)
Kang, Kang, and Hong (2014)
Chien et al. (2014)
Tuarob and Tucker (2015)
164 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173

where U denotes the universe of the finite set of all objects uj , and A
denotes the finite set of attributes ak . V is the set of all attribute
value V ak . That is,
[ could be generated by different subsets of attributes.
V¼ ak 2A
V ak
where V ak is the finite attribute domain of the attribute value of
attribute ak . Finally, for every uj 2 U and ak 2 A, f represents an
information function. That is,
f ðuj ; ak Þ 2 V ak
Decision table of five objects and characterized with five condi-
tional attributes (i.e., gender, major, personal aesthetics, arc and
thickness) and one decision attribute (i.e., UX reaction) were
shown as Table 2. As shown in Table 2, the first two objects have
the decision attribute displaying ‘‘low”, which indicates the user’s
reaction to product visual aesthetics is unsatisfactory. The other
objects have the decision attribute displaying ‘‘high”, implying
the user’s reaction to product visual aesthetics is satisfactory. The
performance of user reaction was associated with the information
of five attributes. The product visual aesthetics was shown as sat-
isfactory or unsatisfactory in UX reactions.
2.3. Indiscernibility relation
Regarding the attributes, objects are considered as indiscernible
as the identical values of considered attributes describe the
objects. Take Objects 1 and 2 as shown in Table 2 as an example,
Objects 1 and 2 have the same attribute in ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”,
which means that Objects 1 and 2 were indiscernible in the attri-
bute of ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”. In other words, the objects described
by the same data of attributes considered are having the indis-
cernibility relation.
Let D be a nonempty subset of set A of all attributes, i.e., D # A
and xi ; xj 2 U. The D-indiscernibility relation defines the objects
xi ; xj as D-indiscernibility relation and was denoted by ID , defines
that xi and xj are D-indiscernible in terms of D as follows:
ðxi ; xj Þ 2 ID () f ðxi ; ad Þ ¼ f ðxj ; ad Þ 8ad 2 D
That is, when assuming the subset D of the attributes is the only
consideration, xi and xj are D-indiscernible. On the basis of indis-
cernibility relation, the universe could be partitioned into various
blocks combination of indiscernible objects. The set of all indis-
cernible objects respecting on particular attribute value is regarded
as an elementary set. The combination of the elementary sets ID ð:Þ
having the indiscernible relations of ID is denoted as U=ID . For
example, let D1 = {‘‘Gender”}, then two D-elementary sets {2, 5}
and {1, 3, 4} will be derived. Namely, ID1 ¼ f2; 5g denotes that
the gender is ‘‘Female”. Likewise, ID1 ¼ f1; 3; 4g given the gender
is ‘‘Male”. Thus, U=ID1 ¼ {{2, 5}, {1, 3, 4}}. Furthermore, when con-
sidering both the attributes, ‘‘gender” and ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”,
four elementary sets of {1, 4}, {2}, {3} and {5} will be generated.
Table 2
Illustration of the decision table.
That is, the D-elementary set where D2 = {‘‘gender”, ‘‘Personal Aes-
thetics”} generated four elementary sets {1, 4}, {2}, {3} and {5}.
Hence, U=ID2 = {{1, 4}, {2}, {3}, {5}}. In this sense, elementary sets
ð2Þ
2.4. Approximation of sets
Let X be the subset of objects of universe U, the lower approx-
imation of X in D, denoted as DX, is a set defined as follows:
ð3Þ
DX ¼ fxi 2 UjID ðxi Þ # Xg ð5Þ
That is, the lower approximation of X in D consists of all the
D-indiscernible elementary sets included in X, and the set com-
prised all the objects that could be naturally categorized into the
set presented the considered attributes.
On the other hand, the upper approximation of X in D, denoted
as DX, is a set consists of all the indiscernibile objects having none-
empty intersection with X defined as follows:
DX ¼ fxi 2 UjID ðxi Þ \ X – Øg ð6Þ
That is, the upper approximation comprises all the objects that
could be possibly categorized into the set presented in the consid-
ered attributes.
The boundary region denoted as BN D ðXÞ is defined as the differ-
ence between the upper and lower approximation of X in D and
could be shown as follows:
BND ðXÞ ¼ DX  DX ð7Þ
indicating the area that cannot be accurately classified with the
intended attributes. As illustrated in Table 2, the objects can be
assorted into two sets, i.e., X 1 and X 0 , according to the decision attri-
bute of ‘‘UX reaction” as follows:
X 1 ¼ f1; 2g; denoting the objects with low UX reaction; ð8Þ
X 2 ¼ f3; 4; 5g; denoting the objects with high UX reaction; ð9Þ
Let D = {‘‘Gender”, ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”}, then U=ID = {{1, 4}, {2},
ð4Þ
{3}, {5}}. The only element that could be included in X 1 is {2}, which
is the lower approximation of set X 1 , denotes as DX 1 is {2}. On the
other hand, since
f1; 4g \ X 1 ¼ f1; 4g \ f1; 2g – Ø ð10Þ
f2g \ X 1 ¼ f2g \ f1; 2g – Ø ð11Þ
f3g \ X 1 ¼ f3g \ f1; 2g ¼ Ø ð12Þ
f5g \ X 1 ¼ f5g \ f1; 2g ¼ Ø ð13Þ
The decision of Objects 1 and 4 could either have ‘‘high” UX
reaction or ‘‘low” UX reaction given the condition of ‘‘male, and
high Personal Aesthetics”, thus the upper approximation of the
set X 1 which denotes as DX 1 is {1, 2, 4}.
Then, the boundary region of X 1 in D could be derived as
follows:

Object Condition attributes Decision BND ðXÞ ¼ DX  DX ¼ f1; 2; 4g  f2g ¼ f1; 4g ð14Þ
attribute
Gender Major Personal Arc Thickness UX Furthermore, the accuracy of the approximation for X i in D
aesthetic reaction could be defined as follows:
1 Male Social High Low Low Low
card ðDX i Þ
Science aD ðX i Þ ¼ ð15Þ
2 Female Engineering High Low High Low card ðDX i Þ
3 Male Electrical Low Low Low High
Engineering The cardinality, i.e. card (.), represents the number of objects in
4 Male Science High High Low High a set. The range of aD ðX i Þ is between 0 and 1. If aD ðX i Þ ¼ 1, X i is an
5 Female Business Low Low High High
exact set with respect to D, and if aD ðX i Þ < 1, then X i is a rough set
 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173
with respect to D. Following the example mentioned above, con-
sider D = {‘‘Gender”, ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”}
DX 1 ¼ f2g ) cardðDX 1 Þ ¼ 1 ð16Þ
DX 1 ¼ f1; 2; 4g ) cardðDX 1 Þ ¼ 3 ð17Þ
Thus,
1
aD ðX 1 Þ ¼ ð18Þ
3 ‘‘UX reaction = High.”
Since the value of aD ðX 1 Þ is smaller than one, X 1 ¼ f1; 2g is a rough
set regarding to D.
2.5. Attribute reduction and rule extraction
To eliminate redundant criteria and derive compact rules,
reducts identification is applied in the RST. Reducts are defined
as the minimal sufficient subsets of attributes that have the same
ability to perceive the information when the whole set of attributes
are applied (Pawlak, 1997). Given D # A and considered an attri-
bute a, i.e. a 2 D. If ID ¼ IDfag , then a is dispensable (inessential)
in D; elsewise, a is indispensable (essential) in D. Therefore, the
dispensable attribute could be excluded without the disintegration
of the initial categorization. On the other hand, the fundamental
concepts we pay attention to could be extracted through applying
essential attributes. Suppose attribute set D and E be the equiva-
lence relation over U, where D # A and E # A. The D-positive
region of E is defined as:
[
POSD ðEÞ ¼ DX ð19Þ
X2U=IE
Representing the set of objects could be properly categorized
into E-elementary sets exploiting the knowledge denoted by ID .
Suppose ai 2 D, if POSD ðEÞ ¼ POSDfai g ðEÞ, then ai is E-inessential
in D;
Otherwise; ai is E-essential in D: ð20Þ
In this case, D is E-independent when every ai in D is E-
inessential. In addition, if and only if the F is the E-independent
subset of D and POSF ðEÞ ¼ POSD ðEÞ, the subset F of D will be
regarded as E-reduct of D.
For example, suppose D = {‘‘Gender”, ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”,
‘‘Thickness”} and E = {‘‘UX reaction”}, four elementary sets were
generated for set D: U=ID = {{1, 4}, {2}, {3}, {5}} and two elementary
sets were generated for set E: U=IE = {{1, 2}, {3, 4, 5}}. Thus,
POSD ðEÞ ¼ f2; 3; 5g. Considering the removal of the attribute
a1 = ‘‘Gender” from set D, then U=IDa1 = {{1, 2, 4}, {3, 5}} and
POSDa1 ðEÞ ¼ f1; 2; 3; 5g – POSD ðEÞ. Hence, the attribute ‘‘Gender”
is E-essential in D. Similarly, the attribute ‘‘Personal Aesthetics”
is E-essential in D. However, when considering a3 = ‘‘Thickness”
in D, since U=IDa3 = {{1, 4}, {2, 3, 5}} and
POSDa3 ðEÞ ¼ f2; 3; 5g ¼ POSD ðEÞ, the attribute ‘‘Thickness” is D-
inessential in E. In this case, the set F = {‘‘Gender”, ‘‘Personal Aes-
thetics”} is a E-reduct of D. The important characteristic of a reduct
is to filter the redundant attributes and apply the critical attributes
to generate patterns. In RST, Core is denoted as the interactions of
the reducts as follows:
CoreðDÞ ¼ \ ReductðDÞ; ð21Þ
in which Reduct (D) is the set of all the reducts of D. Particularly,
Core comprises the most decisive subset of attributes That is, any
removal of its attributes could lead to the decrease of the classifica-
tion capability.
Moreover, the derived reducts may be transformed into deci-
sion rules according to the given information of the essential attri-
butes. For instances, Objects 2, 3 and 5 refer to E-positive region of
165
D with the respect to the condition attributes ‘‘Gender” and ‘‘Per-
sonal Aesthetics”. The derived results could be transformed into
the form of ‘‘IF- THEN” rules as follows:
IF ‘‘Gender = Female” and ‘‘Personal Aesthetics = High”, THEN
‘‘UX reaction = Low.”
IF ‘‘Gender = Male” and ‘‘Personal Aesthetics = Low”, THEN ‘‘UX
reaction = High.”
IF ‘‘Gender = Female” and ‘‘Personal Aesthetics = Low”, THEN
3. Data mining framework to capture UX
This study proposes a data mining framework to capture UX of
product visual aesthetics. RST was applied to explore the relation-
ships among factors and extract useful rules. The proposed data
mining framework is shown in Fig. 1.
3.1. Problem definition
In the stage of a new product development, a right product
design direction is the key driver of competitive advantage and a
successful new product. However, with the diversified develop-
ment in consumer electronics products as well as the dynamically
changing customer desires, mapping customer needs with optimal
combination of product features has been more challenging than
before (Wang, 2013, 2015). This research aims to locate the core
issue by extracting product visual aesthetics UX and obtaining
appropriate features of product appearance design when accessing
target segments.
The relationship between product visual aesthetics and users
should be extracted firstly through domain knowledge to identify
important issues of product appearance design. With the domain
knowledge provided, the quality of derived rules could be ensured
and the interpretation may be more reasonable to practical issues.
The UX information extracted from the data could empower pro-
duct designers to assess designs with visual aesthetics and identify
the key design features that users require.
Three stages including the recording of user information, the
designing of scenario journey experiment, and the data obtaining
of users’ perceptions are involved in the process of capturing UX
for product visual aesthetics. User information refers to typical
user background information, such as demographic data, interests,
preferences and behaviors affecting user’s perceptions and deci-
sions for product appearance. Scenario journey is a series of tasks
designed for users to interact with real products to facilitate the
assessment of users’ product adoption and attitudes. The informa-
tion of users’ attitudes and the reactive behaviors during the UX
scenario journey was surveyed and collected as the user perception
data regarding product visual aesthetics.
3.2. Data preparation
Three types of data were collected, including the users’ back-
ground information, perception, and UX reaction, at different
stages according to the design of scenario journey experiment.
1. Data of user background information data: User background
information includes the factors of users that potentially affect
the UX response. The data of user background information con-
tains demographic, character factors (gender, age, profession
and major) (Ewert & Baker, 2001; Xue & Yen, 2007), personal
experience (experience of product usage, experience of product
possession and frequency of usage), current status (purchase
motivation and purchase requirement) and personal aesthetics.
166 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173

Problem Definition of
Definition user satisfaction level

Data Integration

Data Data Cleaning

Preparation
Data Transformation

Data Partition

Training Data Set Testing Data Set

Decision Table Construction

Reducts generation
Rules
Generation Rules generation

Candidate rules collection Candidate rules collection

Results
Evaluation Domain knowledge
and
Interpretation Decision rules and results
discussion

Fig. 1. Framework of data-driven product design for capturing user experience of product visual aesthetics.

2. Data of perception data: Data of perception is one of the factors
during the user experience the scenario journey. The perception
data includes the information acquired from the process of
experiment such as functional performance, experiencing time
and the ease of use.
3. Data of UX reaction: The satisfaction level of users for product
appearance after experiencing scenario journey is regarded as
the data of UX reaction. The data of UX reaction data contains
the data of experimental responses such as aesthetic and func-
tional satisfaction, the usage time of a product and the recom-
mendations of a product.
The process of data preparation can improve the quality of the
data and enhance the efficiencies of mining results. Firstly, the data
collected needs to be integrated from multiple sources into coher-
ent data store. Secondly, data cleaning approach is applied to
remove noisy data, identify outliers, fill in missing data, and correct
inconsistencies. Thirdly, data is transformed and consolidated into
a form which is appropriate for mining. Finally, the data was par-
titioned into training data set (k%) and testing data set (1  k%).
In particular, rules were generated by training data set, and the
testing data set was used to validate the derived rules.
3.3. Rules generation
Step 2: Generate attributes set. Generate all possible
reducts with removing inessential attributes and retained
attributes which have obvious relationship with reaction
variables.
Step 3: Evaluate the generated reducts based on domain knowl-
edge and obtain the sets of satisfied reducts.
Step 4: Generate candidate rules based on the selected reducts
from attribute set.
Step 5: Filter the decision results. Consider various reactions of
different users and delete the decision results which are not the
focus class.
Step 6: Calculate the support value of the rules derived.
Step 7: If the support of the rule P the threshold of support,
then select generated rule into candidate rules pool.
Step 8: Arrange and output the candidate rules.
Three indices of support, confidence and lift were applied to
validate the conformity of rules derived from RST approach and
further give decision maker quantitative information of the rules.
Firstly, support is regarded as the acceptance threshold for the can-
didate rule, and it’s defined as follows:
SupportU ðRule iÞ ¼ Pðclass U
\ subset data selected by Rule iÞ ð22Þ

RST is proposed to generate the reducts to derive candidate
rules, which is shown as follows:
Step 1: Construct the decision table. Sort out the data into the
table of factors corresponded to the reaction. If the decision
table contains numerical attributes, perform data discretization,
and restart from Step 1 (Liu, Hussain, Tan, & Dash, 2002); other-
wise, skip to Step 3.
Secondly, confidence denotes the prediction accuracy of subset
applied to classify the subset into an accurate class. Thirdly, lift is
the measure of the performance of rules at predicting or classifying
cases having an enhanced response from the general population. In
other words, lift is the information gain ratio.
ConfidenceU ðRule iÞ
¼ Pðtarget class U jsubset data selected by Rule i ð23Þ
 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173
LiftU ðRule iÞ
¼ Pðtarget class Ujsubset iÞ=Pðtarget class Uj populationÞ ð24Þ
Testing data was then used to estimate the validity of candidate
rules, and the validation process can be shown as follows:
Step 1: Set k = 1
Step 2: Set a = 1, b = 0, c = 0. Summarize the object a.
Calculate the number of object that matches the condition of
rule k as b.
Calculate the number of object that matches the condition of
rule k as c.
Step 3: Calculate the confidencek and liftk , in which
confidencek = c/b and liftk = confidencek = the proportion of
interested class.
Step 4: If confidencek P thresholds of confidence and liftk P
thresholds of lift, then choose candidate rule k into the valida-
tion rules pool, or else eliminates this rule.
Step 5: If k < total number of generated rules, then k = k + 1, and
go back to Step 1.
Step 6: Confirm the validation rules and discuss the derived
rules with domain expert for obtaining meaningful explana-
tions and interpretation of rules.
3.4. Results evaluation and interpretation
Through the rules and the relationship derived from the user
reaction results corresponded to UX capturing process, product
designers can identify the important features for product visual
aesthetics design. In addition, obtaining the design requirement
and the characteristic of target market segment help interpret user
decision and speculate their behaviors. After the discussion with
domain experts for the interpretation of derived rules, the UX cap-
tured results are verified and able to transform into useful cus-
tomer information, and provide as the input of decision for
design and marketing management. Since the customer desires
as well as market demands change dynamically, the rules acquired
from the RST mining process should update regularly. The results
derived the latest user information and product desire to enhance
the core competitiveness of the products.
4. Empirical study
4.1. Problem definition
With the continued innovation in the styles of notebook com-
puter products, the features of products such as product forms,
product visual aesthetics and functions have been diversified in
order to compete in a severe competitive market. Among product
features mentioned above, product visual aesthetics is especially
important for manufacturers and designers to consider. In particu-
lar, it is the key factor to assist the notebook computer product to
stand out in the crowded market. Due to its visual distinctiveness,
the product is more likely to capture the attention of customers in
the first place, and further affecting the purchased decision of cus-
tomers. However, it is challenging for product designers to decide
how a new product visual aesthetics should look like, because they
have too many process technology alternatives to select. Mean-
while, they have to balance the aesthetic design with other product
features and prototypes, and further launch the product to meet
the time to market. Therefore, it is crucial to gain a deeper under-
standing of the effect of visual aesthetics on the perceptions of
users about the preferences and UX of notebook computer. The
167
decision element checklist as Table 3 was firstly generated to clar-
ify the relevant information to define the problem.
Focusing on the realistic need to capture UX in terms of visual
aesthetics of notebook products, an empirical study was conducted
for EMS company from 20XX/1/1 to 20XX/3/31 for validation. This
company is one of the largest and leading companies for notebook
and computer EMS worldwide that provides quality design and
manufacturing services to the worldwide leading brands for tech-
nology products. During the execution of experiment, 168 subjects
were recruited from different backgrounds for testing the UX of the
product visual aesthetics. For the purpose to consider factors
homogenization and avoid particular factor affecting results signif-
icantly, this study regarded gender, major and the personal aes-
thetics of users as the criteria for filtration. The user information
such as demographic factors, personal characters, personal experi-
ence and personal aesthetics were also collected.
A scenario journey was conducted to evaluate the perceptions
of users for product visual aesthetics. Firstly, each user was
assigned to experience 11 different aesthetic design notebook
computers. The running order of the users was arranged by the
respect to the homogenization of user background information
such as gender and major. Secondly, users were asked to actually
interact and evaluate the product according to the instruction of
experimental standard operating procedure provided. In particular,
the users were asked to judge the product appearance under the
simulative window shopping situation. Besides, three different
observed angles were assigned for them to evaluate the perfor-
mance of product visual aesthetics. Furthermore, users were
requested to actually touch the product to obtain the tactual per-
ceptions. After completing the interaction process with products,
users were requested to fill a questionnaire of each product to
report their sensational experience for product visual aesthetics
design. The questionnaire results were collected and applied as
the data of perceptions. With the perception data collected, the dif-
ferent decisions of users regarding product visual aesthetics can be
derived through clustering of the perception response, and the
results were used as the decision data.
In order to capture the UX for product visual aesthetics neu-
trally, this study applied Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics
(CVPA) (Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003) scale to verify users feeling
for the products visual aesthetics. Likert scales were used to eval-
uate user perception ranging from ‘‘strongly disagree to strongly
agree”. The Cronbach Alpha value was checked for the question-
naire results, and showed a high degree of statistical consistency
(Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.921).
Table 3
Check list of decision elements.
Type Decision element Description
Context Customers Based on their past user experience and
using habit to select notebook
computers
Competitors Global notebook computer
manufacturers have the process
capability to launch the product rapidly
Industry The launch time of new product is fast,
the life cycle of new product is short
Limitation Cost of decision The budget of new product launching
implementation
Allotted time of Half year to one year
decision
implementation
Stakeholders Decision makers Managers of each business unit
Those affected by Customers, product designers, product
the decision manufacturers, production staff
168 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173

4.2. Data preparation Table 5

The levels of attributes.

At the stage of data preparation, data including user back-
ground, perception and decision were first merged into adherent
data set. In particular, the integrated data composed 10 condition
attributes (1 for the number of the subjects, 3 for user information
and 6 for user perception) and 1 decision attribute (UX reaction),
which are shown in Table 4. In particular, Items 1–4 denoted the
perspectives of the first user for the product visual aesthetics
regarding notebook Products 1–4.
In order to explore the reasons for high aesthetic UX reaction or
low aesthetic UX reaction, the users were divided into high, med-
ium, and low aesthetic group according to their response of CVPA
scale. Furthermore, the collected results of user perception data
were discretized into three categories by applying K-means
method, which included high level aesthetic reaction (425, 18%),
medium level aesthetic reaction (1807, 77%) and low level aes-
thetic reaction (120, 5%). With the analysis of variance (ANOVA)
test, a significantly different performance was found to exist in
these three categories, which the p-values are all equal to zero.
After the discretization process, the levels of the attributes can
be shown in Table 5.
For the data cleaning process, the missing and the inconsisten-
cies were revised through the verification with users. After the data
cleaning process, data of 168 users’ product experiences regarding
visual aesthetics was collected, and there are 1848 sets data in
total. At the final stage of data preparation, this study used the
order of the experiment time as the criteria to divide the data into
training and testing data set. In particular, the data with shorter
experiment time (1478, 80%) was used as training data set for
deriving rules, and the data with longer experiment time (370,
20%) was used as testing data set for evaluating the validity of
derived rules. Five folds cross-validation were conducted for both
training and testing data set.
4.3. Rules generation
To demonstrate the advantages of the proposed framework,
classification data mining approaches were applied to the datasets
of this study. The classification methods include neural networks,
support vector machines, RST and Decision Trees (DTs). RST and
DTs can provide better capacities than neural networks and sup-
port vector machines for exploring data and extracting the latent
information into a series of simple and useful decision rules
(Mak & Munakata, 2002). RST and DTs can identify the causal rela-
tionships involving the processes, products, and their interactions
to capture the UX. Indeed, the extracted decision rules can provide
sufficient information or evidence for design insights based on
the screening criteria. Training data set was employed to generate
the reducts and derived the candidate rules by RST-based and
Category Attribute Level
User background factor Gender 2
Major 6
Personal aesthetic 3
Product visual aesthetic characteristics Arc 5
Thickness 5
Product size 5
Screen 5
Material 5
DT-based approach. Then, testing data set was used to verify the
preciseness of the significant decision rules.
4.3.1. RST-based approach
Take the first cross validation of training data set for instance,
candidate rules were selected if there were at least 6 items sup-
porting the rules associated with high aesthetic UX reaction or
low aesthetic UX reaction. A decision table contains 10 condition
attributes and 1 UX reaction. By the threshold of support, 45 can-
didate rules were derived, and the sample of the first fold result are
shown in Table 6.
For example, Rule 1 in Table 6 was a reduct with two attributes
and 69 supporting data, meaning ‘‘IF a user has a high personal aes-
thetics, and satisfies the arc shape of the product. THEN, the overall
UX reaction of this product visual aesthetics is high.” In addition,
Rule 2 is another reduct with 3 attributes and 52 supporting data,
which means ‘‘IF a female user satisfied with the arc shape and the
size ratio of the product. THEN, the overall UX reaction of this pro-
duct visual aesthetics is high”.
In this study, we inspected the rules and the reasons of high and
low levels of aesthetic UX reactions, but excluded the medium
level aesthetic UX reaction to obtain better insight for product
visual aesthetics design. To screen unqualified candidate rules,
the criteria of confidence and lift was applied to validate data,
and the threshold of confidence level was 80% and the lift was 1.
Some sample of validation results of candidate rules are shown
in Table 7.
Following the result of the first cross validation, take Rule 1 in
Table 7 as an illustrative example. Rule 1 would be accepted
because its confidence level is 100% (>80%) and the lift is 4.055
(>1). However, Rule 3 would be rejected because its confidence
level is 44.2% (<80%) and the lift is 1.792 (>1). Therefore, through
the iterative validation process for the testing data, 14 rules were
extracted.
After another four times cross-validation, all candidate rules
were derived (Candidate rules 45, 70, 72, 62 were generated that
are associated with the UX reaction). The testing data were filtered

Table 4
Decision table of product visual aesthetic UX.

Item IF (Condition attributes) THEN (UX reaction)

Product number Gender Major Personal aesthetic ... Arc Thickness Size ratio ...
1 1 Male Social Science High ... 3 2 2 ... Low
2 Male Social Science High ... 3 5 4 ... High
3 Male Social Science High ... 3 3 4 ... Low
4 Male Social Science High ... 5 5 5 ... High
.. .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. ... ..
. . . . . . . . .
168 8 Female Engineering High ... 3 3 2 ... Low
9 Female Engineering High ... 4 4 3 ... Low
10 Female Engineering High ... 3 5 5 ... High
11 Female Engineering High ... 4 5 4 ... High
 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173 169

Table 6
Partial candidate rules for UX reaction.

Rule IF (Condition attributes) THEN Support

Gender Major Personal aesthetic Arc Thickness Size ratio Screen Material (UX reaction)
1 x x 3 5 x x x x High 69
2 2 x x 5 x 5 x x High 52
3 x 2 x 5 x x 5 x High 31
4 x x x 1 x x x 1 Low 11

Table 7
Partial candidate rules of first cross validation by the RST-based approach.

Rule Candidate rule Number of items Number of items matching Confidence Lift Accept
matching the the condition & decision (%)
condition part of rule part of rule
1 IF a user has a high personal aesthetic, and feels the arc shape of the 22 22 100 4.055 Yes
product has good design, THEN, the user has high UX reaction for the
product visual aesthetic
2 IF a user is female, and feels the arc shape of the product has good 22 20 90.9 3.68 Yes
design, and the size ratio of the product is suitable to her, THEN, the user
has high UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
3 IF a user is female, and her major is business, and is satisfied with the 43 19 44.2 1.792 No
material design of the product, THEN, the user has high UX reaction for
the product visual aesthetic
4 IF a user major in engineering, and feels the arc shape of the product has 10 9 90 3.649 Yes
good design, and the screen ratio is suitable to him or her, THEN, the
user has high UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
5 IF a user has a medium personal aesthetic, and he or she feels the arc 3 2 66.7 2.7 No
shape of product has good design, and the screen ratio is suitable to him
or her, and is satisfied with the material design of the product, THEN, the
user has high UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic

and validated through applying the threshold of confidence and
lift. The integrated rules can be shown in Table 8.
4.3.2. DT-based approach
The CHAID (Kass, 1980) was employed to extract the relation
between users’ sensation and the related factors as the following
procedures:
Step 0: Define the threshold of support, denoted as acceptance
criteria for the candidate rules, and determine the stopping cri-
teria, in which all attributes in the DT model are not signifi-
cantly different or the number of instances in the node is less
than 5.
Step 1: Identify the predicted attributes and response attribute.
Step 2: IF the decision table includes numerical attributes, per-
form data discretization; otherwise, go to Step 3.
Step 3: Select the most significant attribute as a splitting node
and the grow tree by one level.
Step 4: Grow the tree iteratively until the stopping criteria are
met; otherwise, go to Step 3.
Step 5: Prune the leaf node if the support of the leaf node is less
than the threshold of support.
Step 6: Generate rules from the tree structure into the candi-
date rules pool.
Step 7: Extract meaningful rules from the operation process
information associated with suffered lots of the minority class
which is often set as the interested class.

Table 8
Validation of candidate rules for product visual aesthetic UXs by the RST-based
approach.
Rule Candidate rule
1 IF a user has a high personal aesthetic, and feels
the arc shape of the product has a good design,
THEN, the user has high UX reaction for the
product visual aesthetic
2 IF a user is female, and feels the arc shape of the
product has a good design, and the size ratio of
the product is suitable to her, THEN, the user
has high UX reaction for the product visual
aesthetic
3 IF a user major in engineering, and feels the arc
shape of the product has a good design, and the
screen ratio is suitable to him or her, THEN, the
user has high UX reaction for the product visual
aesthetic
4 IF a user feels the arc shape of the product has a
bad design, and is unsatisfied with the material
design of the product, THEN the user has low
UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
The latent relationships were explored by the DT-based
approach. Take the first cross validation of training data set for
instance, candidate rules were selected if there were at least 6
Confidence Lift
items supporting the rules associated with high aesthetic UX reac-
(%)
tion or low aesthetic UX reaction. By the threshold of support, 4
83.3 4.23 candidate rules were derived, and the sample of the first fold result
are shown in Table 9.
Similarly, the same testing data and evaluation criteria of confi-
86.7 4.39 dence and lift were used to validate the candidate rules as calcu-
lated in Table 8. Through the derived UX ‘‘IF-THEN” rules, the
relationships and the compositions of the users’ perception infor-
mation and UX can be identified. The derived rules which passed
100 5.076 the screening criteria can provide insight for product designers to
identify the key design elements of product visual aesthetics. To
encapsulate the information that was found in validation rules,
the satisfaction level of the product arc design could be the major
100 5.076 factors influence the UX reaction for product visual aesthetics.
As the results, RST approach and DT approach are applied with
different attribute evaluation criteria. RST approach reserves the
indiscernible relation by using the minimum attribute sets based
170 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173
Table 9
Partial candidate rules of first cross validation by the DT-based approach.
Rule Candidate rule
1 IF a user has a high personal aesthetic, and feels the arc shape of the
product has good design, THEN, the user has high UX reaction for the
product visual aesthetic
2 IF a user is female, and feels the arc shape of the product has good
design, and the size ratio of the product is suitable to her, THEN, the user
has high UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
3 IF a user major in engineering, and feels the arc shape of the product has
good design, and the screen ratio is suitable to him or her, THEN, the
user has high UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
4 IF a user feels the arc shape of the product has a bad design, and is
unsatisfied with the material design of the product, THEN the user has
low UX reaction for the product visual aesthetic
on the reduct to eliminate redundant or surplus attributes in the
decision table. DT approach explains the data based on the maxi-
mum information value during each splitting tree process. In addi-
tion, the appearance of rules is different. RST approach provides
extensive and detailed rules, while a DT approach mainly focuses
on the most significant attributes and provides essential and con-
cise information from rules.
4.4. Results evaluation and interpretation
According to the extracted rules and the discussion with
domain experts, this study discovered four types of users’ charac-
teristics and the relations with factors of product aesthetic design.
The first one is the user type with high level of personal aesthetics.
If this type of users are satisfied with the arc shape design of the
notebook computer, their overall UX reaction toward the product
visual aesthetics would be high. The insight behind this result is
that for users with high level of personal aesthetics, they will be
impressed by the notebooks of its high standard design from a
famous brand. The image of the product with exquisite design will
be deeply rooted in their mind and further affected their UX reac-
tion and decision. Meanwhile, most of the leading fashion brand
notebooks have the exquisite design for arc appearance, while
the arc design in this case has become an important judgment cri-
terion for the users with high personal aesthetics.
The second obtained user characteristic obtained is that female
users who are satisfied with the arc appearance and the size ratio,
and then the overall UX reaction for the product visual aesthetics
would be high. Through observation, female users particularly with
high level aesthetics will also be influenced by the notebook’s
brand and the arc appearance design. In this case, they will tend
to select the product with good arc appearance design. The reason
females for they value size ratio as the criterion can contribute to
the factor of comfort. Female users are more sensitive to the com-
fort and the ease of use level of the product than males, since their
physical structure is different from males. For example, their
strength ability and the tolerance to strength are smaller than
males. Thus the weight load or the size of products will signifi-
cantly affect the overall comfort level they perceive, and this
becomes the key factor influencing their UX reaction.
The third feature is that users with an engineering major have
high satisfaction of the product arc appearance and the screen ratio
when using the product. Then the overall UX reaction for the pro-
duct visual aesthetics would be high. By understanding this type of
users’ living style, we discovered that most of the users major in
engineering have to use software programs and need the assis-
tance of notebook computers to accomplish their work for a long
time. In this long time usage situation, the levels of accuracy and
details projected on the screen will affect their usage satisfaction.
Number of items Number of items matching Confidence Lift Accept
matching the the condition & decision (%)
condition part of rule part of rule
22 22 100 4.055 Yes
22 20 90.9 3.68 Yes
10 9 90 3.649 Yes
18 18 100 4.055 Yes
Besides, the comfortable level of their eyes will affect their volun-
tariness of use, thus for this type of users, screen display and design
should both be emphasized.
Finally, we found that if the users regarded the arc appearance
and the perceived feeling of touching material of the product are
negative, then their UX reaction of product visual aesthetics will
be negative. Through the awareness of self-consciousness, users
tend to choose the products that can express their self-image
and status. They regard the arc appearance design and the material
tactile as the key elements for expressing their taste when evaluat-
ing the visual aesthetics of the notebook products. In addition, the
unique design for the material and arc appearance may become the
representative features of the notebook brand. Thus, if the visual
aesthetics design of the product cannot differentiate its arc appear-
ance and material, then it’s hard to appeal users’ attention to stand
out in the competitive market.
5. Discussion
In general, four stages including design, manufacturing, market-
ing, sales and customer services are contained in the notebook pro-
duct development process. In the as-is model, consumer
electronics manufacturers often benchmark on the successful
products, and apply their experience into new product design con-
cepts. On the other hand, to avoid patent litigation, product design-
ers can improve some of features to generate innovative product
design. Accordingly, consumer electronics manufacturers are mak-
ing improvements of manufacturing process to reduce the cost to
gain business competitiveness. For example, after Apple launching
the ideas of tablets, manufacturers in the computer devices indus-
try started to follow this direction to develop their products and
manufacturing techniques. In this case, most of the time product
designers are shutting in the dark to see if they get any lucks to
predict the real customer needs. Therefore, consumer electronics
manufacturers constantly launch similar products with lower price
to sustain in the market.
As for the stage of marketing and sales, price competition and
red ocean strategies are used to deal with the severe market com-
petition. That is, the new products are trampled by the market and
the values will diminish rapidly, which leads to an internecine con-
sequence. Owing to little consideration of UX and customer expec-
tation, it is difficult to design a product in line with customer
requirements. Lots of efforts and costs have to spend on the mar-
keting strategies, and customer services for coping with customer
complaints. Future product improvement was derived from the
feedback of customer complaints, which is minor under this fram-
ing effect. Therefore, consumer electronics manufacturers may not
have sufficient resource to breakthrough innovation of the new
products. However, with the results of this study, UX and customer
 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173 171

insights can be considered in the to-be model. Meanwhile, the
results can be regarded as decision reference for product designers
to determine ideal design concepts, and further enhance the pro-
duct based on customer needs. When the design concept is verified
effectively with the assistance of the derived rules, the efficiency
and the quality of production process control at the manufacturing
stage can be improved. In addition, manufacturing problems such
as bottleneck, yield enhancement may have more lead time and
resources to solve and validate.
The proposed framework driven by the information of UX and
users’ perceptions provide insights to the stage of marketing and
sales. It is easier to focus on the target customers, after capturing
the critical viewpoint of users and their associative background
information. The matchmaking process of products and customers
may be more accurate based on the assistance of the insights dis-
covered. Finally, customers can share their product experience to
their friends and other social platforms. As their needs are fulfilled
and considered at the initial stage of product design their com-
plaints will decrease. Based on the satisfactory UX of the products,
customers will be more likely to promote product and develop
brand royalty.
as new function and operation system. Furthermore, alternative
data mining techniques can be applied to compare the effective-
ness and explore the interrelationship of the user’s information
and perceptions comprehensively. Further studies can also be done
to apply the proposed approach to other technological products to
determine the product visual aesthetics design, meanwhile iden-
tify the target segment for product promotion to increase new pro-
duct market sales and revenue.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported by Ministry of Science and Technol-
ogy, Taiwan (NSC 102-2221-E-007-057-MY3; MOST 105-2622-8-
007-002-TM1, MOST 105-2410-H-468-002-MY2; MOST 103-
2218-E-007-023; MOST 105-2221-E-007-078-MY3), The Toward
World Class University Project from the Ministry of Education
(104N2074E1), and Quanta Computer, Inc.
Appendix A. Questionnaire for acquiring users’ sensation
experiences

6. Conclusion

Aspects Questions
The highly competitive consumer market environment has dri-
ven the branded notebook firms and contract manufacturers to CVPA-Value 1. Having this product that has supe-
launch new products constantly. The capability to precisely predict rior design will make me feel I am
the product design before launching the products is essential for different to others
ensuring the competitive advantage among the severe competi- 2. I am happy to see the displays of
tion. This study proposed a data mining framework employed this product that has superior
RST to explore and analyze UX data for identifying important rela- design
tionship of users’ background information and the notebook pro- 3. This product appearance design
duct visual aesthetics perceptions. makes me happy
The substantive contribution of this study is to develop a feasi- 4. The beautiful product design of this
ble process to explore UX perception and decision of product product will make our world a bet-
design. With actual application in three phases of projects, the ter place to live
results have been approved and adopted by the empirical study CVPA-Acumen 5. I am able to see the subtle differ-
company. Empirical results and related mechanism have been used ence in this product design
as the decision support for future product development strategy. 6. I can see the design details of this
The academic contribution of this study is to develop a data driven product
framework which integrates the decision elements of product 7. I can imagine how other product
forms and features to improve product design. The proposed will fit in with the design style of
framework inherits the past and ushers in the future to provide this product
basis for user and UX studies to follow. 8. I can tell the reason why this pro-
Based on the explication and the discussion of the derived rules duct design is better than the
with domain experts, useful directions for product designer to others
design the product considering customer’s expectation were devel- CVPA-Response 9. I will be attracted by this product
oped to improve the product design management. Furthermore, appearance design
marketing strategies derived based on the mining results can assist 10. This product appearance design
the decision maker to clarify the customer segmentation and their really speaks to me
preference as well as needs, and further allocate the marketing 11. When I see this product appear-
resource to the right segment, respectively. ance design, I am eager to pur-
In this study, RST was used for data mining to generate rules, chase it
and the results obtained were easier to interpret and understand. Attributes of product 1. I think the appearance of this pro-
With an effective and systematic procedure to analyze user infor- visual aesthetics duct has a good arc design
mation and clarify the experimental factors and the perception 2. I think this product is light and
information, the UX extracted from the empirical study has shown handy
practical viability for generating useful design management rules 3. I think this product has a thin flank
and marketing strategies. The generated results assist product design
managers to understand the properties of the target segment, 4. I think this product has appropriate
and further manage the product features to build up the brand size
images. 5. I think this product has appropriate
Future study can be done to develop systematic approaches for screen size
data-driven innovation for different types of product features such
(continued on next page)
172 C.-F. Chien et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 99 (2016) 162–173
Appendix A (continued)
Aspects Questions
6. I think this product has appropriate
weight
7. I think this product has a good
material tactile impression
8. I think the overall appearance
design of this product is excellent
9. I have great purchasing intention
on this product appearance design
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