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Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality
function deployment

Article  in  Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems · June 2020

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-192032

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Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems 39 (2020) 1131–1146 1131
DOI:10.3233/JIFS-192032
IOS Press

Aesthetic product design combining

with rough set theory and fuzzy quality
function deployment
Xinhui Kang∗
School of Art and Design, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China

Abstract. The emotional value of products, especially aesthetic qualities are conducive to increasing the market competitive-
ness along with the improvement of living standards. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to combine the rough set
theory and fuzzy quality function deployment design matrix to construct an innovative model, thus developing an aesthetic
product design for customer satisfaction. Taking Blender as an example, the author divides this paper into three phases.
Firstly, the author summarizes seven aesthetic qualities through the literature discussions and determines the core aesthetic
qualities of Blender by making rough set theory attribute reduction and importance calculation. Secondly, the results are
imported into the fuzzy quality function deployment needs facet, and the correlation matrix is established by consulting the
expert’s opinions to obtain the optimal combination of design features. Finally, the combination of the features produces a
bio-conceptual shape via a bionics step. The results show that four out of seven aesthetic attributes (ie, concise, original,
elegant, and comfortable) are found to be more significant. The optimal combination of product features are integrated with
the bio-inspired method to generate three design solutions, in which the styling of butterfly concept effectively enhances the
products’ emotional value and customers’ aesthetic satisfaction degree.

Keywords: Product design, customer satisfaction, rough set theory, fuzzy quality function deployment, Blender

1. Introduction on the market (Fig. 1). The well-known manufactur-

People begin to pay attention to healthy and nutri-
tious foods along with the improvement of material
and living standards. Blender can make drinks that
integrate health care, diet therapy with beauty, so
it is popular among consumers who enjoy leisure
life. According to the report from Zion Research [1],
global demand for Blender and Juicer market was
valued at USD 2,334.5 million in 2015, which is
expected to reach USD 3,320.8 million in 2021 and is
anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% between 2016
and 2021. However, there are many Blender brands
∗ Corresponding author. Xinhui Kang, School of Art and
Design, Nanchang University, No. 999 Xuefu Avenue, Nanchang
330031, Jiangxi, China. E-mail: nbukxh@163.com.
ers include Electrolux, Philips, and Panasonic. When
consumers interact with products, they often buy
products that accurately reflect their tastes, so consid-
ering consumers’ needs and expectations becomes a
crucial variable that determines the successful prod-
ucts. Blender’s working principle is relatively simple;
it the juice separation is mainly achieved through
the high-speed rotation of the blade. Under the con-
text of rapid changes in contemporary technology,
the innovations in product functions are difficult to
attract attention from consumers. The introduction of
new products to the market is becoming increasingly
difficult due to the competition, fashion trends, the
implementation shortage of appropriate technologies
and the complexity of the legislation [2]. Desmet and
Hekkert [3] believed that three levels of emotional

ISSN 1064-1246/20/$35.00 © 2020 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
1132 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
Fig. 1. Brand of Blender on the market.
feedback can be achieved from the users’ interac-
tion with the product, including the aesthetic level
of sensory pleasure, the meaning level of the prod-
uct symbol and the emotional level which is induced
from products. Therefore, providing emotional val-
ues of products, especially to meet the aesthetic needs
of consumers are the key to the survival of the indus-
try. All of these are beneficial for customers to make
purchasing decisions and assist product designers
in developing new products. However, most of the
researches in the past focus on Blender’s ecodesign
[4], handles design of ergonomics [5] and usabil-
ity analysis [6, 7]. There are few studies that focus
on the quantitative relationship between the visual
aesthetics and the design features of the Blender.
To deal with the consumers’ sentiments in product
design, Kansei Engineering (KE), launched the the-
ory on Kansei knowledge in 1970 which was defined
as a consumer-oriented technology that quantifies the
consumers’ psychology and be translated into design
elements [8]. After more than 40 years’ development,
it has been successfully applied in the design fields of
household appliances, clothing and cosmetics [9–11].
Quality function deployment (QFD) is quite similar
to KE’s principle. It is a comprehensive concept that
transforms customers’ needs into technical require-
ments, which enables enabling enterprises to put
engineering management at a critical place to achieve
real benefits [12]. Kowalska et al. [13] presented
the application of QFD method to identify consumer
preferences in the quality analysis of confectionery
products. Jin et al. [14] prioritize engineering char-
acters for QFD in the product design area based on
online reviews. Hartono [15] incorporated the Kano
model and QFD into KE in luxury hotel services.
However, QFD still has two issues that need to be fur-
ther explored: (1) QFD research is mostly reflected
in functional or service requirements, and it seldom
deals with the emotional needs of customers with
fuzzy and non-linear characteristics. (2) Many schol-
ars use the Kano model on the left side of the House of
Quality (HoQ), and the traditional Kansei evaluation
methods such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP)
and Delphi can determine the relative weight of cus-
tomer demands. But these methods lack innovation.
Given the above problems, this paper introduces the
fuzzy theory and develops fuzzy QFD to solve the
lack of colloquial retelling to imitate the natural lan-
guage of human thinking and behaviors. By taking
the Blender’s emotional design as an example, the
aesthetic quality of the product is introduced into the
fuzzy QFD customer demand facet, and the relation-
ship between product aesthetic quality and customer
satisfaction is analyzed by rough set theory (RST),
which indicate that aesthetic quality is worthy of more
focus and attention insight. Compared with the lin-
ear analysis methods such as Kano model and AHP,
RST, as one of the artificial intelligence technolo-
gies, can accurately measure customers’ emotional
cognition in a non-linear and non-normal distribution
way.
In the era of perceptual consumption, customers’
emotional needs, especially aesthetic expectations
have more and more influences on their purchase
decisions in contrast with the price, quality and func-
tion of products. Hence, the objective of this study
is to construct an innovative model that is based on
RST and fuzzy QFD to develop aesthetic product
design for customer satisfaction. It uses RST to obtain
the core aesthetic qualities and importance weight-
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
ing after summarizing the aesthetic qualities through
literature review. Then the fuzzy QFD is applied to
establish the fuzzy correlation matrix between the
Blender aesthetic requirements and design features,
and the optimal combination of product form design
is determined by features sorting. Finally, the fusion
bio-inspired method obtains a more vivid product
form to realize the product differentiation competi-
tion strategy, and provide the relevant manufacturers
and designers with creative references in the early
stage of new product development.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Lit-
erature reviews are briefly introduced in Section 2,
which are about RST and fuzzy QFD. Section 3
presents the detail of the proposed integrated method-
ology. A case study is applied in Section 4 and
the conclusions of this study are summarized in
Section 5.
2. Literature reviews
2.1. Collection of product aesthetic qualities
Aesthetics is the art theory of beauty and the sci-
ence of perceptual cognition proposed by German
philosopher Baumgarten in 1750. Dictionary defini-
tions of aesthetic include “relating to the beautiful as
distinguished from the merely pleasing” and “relating
to sensuous cognition” [16] and as such emphasizes
the common understanding of aesthetics as having to
do with visual appeal [17]. Aesthetics quality is the
most censorious element of new product development
to capture customers’ attention and create a posi-
tive emotional reaction to achieve higher customer
satisfaction [18]. Customers’ purchase decisions are
often highly correlated with the visual aesthetics of
the products. For example, ALESSI is well-known
in the world for its “Aesthetics, Craftsmanship, and
Creativity” as “Factories of Italian Design”. To scien-
tifically and effectively improve the aesthetic quality
of products, we can measure the aesthetic needs of
customers and realize their aesthetic needs through
the designing of product forms. In the study of
aesthetic cognition, aesthetic shapes have the char-
acteristics of integrity, order, visual balance, rhythm,
and appropriate size ratio [19]. According to the
previous literature, we shall collect the appropri-
ate product aesthetic quality [20–22]. After that, ten
experts (three design engineers with more than five
years’ experiences in design, three managers with rel-
evant sales experience of Blender, and four graduate
1133
students with design background) form a focus group
to identify seven aesthetic qualities that are applica-
ble to describe the Blender’s form imagery: Original,
elegant, modern, concise, fashionable, comfortable
and enjoyable.
2.2. Rough set theory
RST is the basic concept and related theory which
is put forward by Polish scientist Pawlak [23] on
the boundary line region concept. It can effectively
analyze and deal with imprecision, uncertainty and
non-linearity information, and discover the hidden
knowledge and reveal potential laws. In recent years,
many scholars have extended the RST to the field of
artificial intelligence, data mining, pattern recogni-
tion and emotional computing. It especially shows
the bright future in the field of KE [24–26]. RST
mainly extracts Kansei knowledge in two aspects: (1)
Attribute reduction and core calculation, like Park
et al. [27] applied RST to extract core service ele-
ments for specific feelings and provided managerial
implications for the service design of airlines. Shi
et al. [28] extracted critical form features of the
mobile phone relative to specific Kansei images by
using an attribute reduction algorithm based on RST.
(2) Extraction of design rules, like Kobayashi and
Niwa [29] used RST to extract rules that describe
the relationships between customers’ preference and
impressions taken from an existing product for aes-
thetic design. Shieh et al. [30] combined the KE and
RST to explore the relationship between form and
color during a product evaluation. Zhai et al. [31,
32] proposed a new decision support approach that
is based on the principles of dominance-based RST
to improve consumer affective satisfaction in product
design. The above literature shows that we can mainly
see the RST in the decision rules of mining users’
emotional cognition and characteristics of products
form. This can express the fuzzy user preferences
in an “If-then” mode which is easy for humans to
understand. At the same time, the attribute reduction
algorithm extracts key product form elements and
removes some elements which have fewer impacts
on specific Kansei semantics. However, there are no
articles that use the attribute reduction algorithm in
RST to determine the relationship between the prod-
uct Kansei quality and customer satisfaction and the
importance of Kansei. There are only some scholars
who make use of RST to sorting product functional
requirements [33–35] or service requirements [36,
37]. Therefore, we apply RST to determine the core
1134 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
aesthetic quality of Blender and calculate the weight
of each quality.
2.3. Fuzzy QFD
QFD is a customer-oriented design and produc-
tion process system with four interconnected phases
(Fig. 2). It is the quality engineering management
technology that transforms the customer demands for
products into technical features, component features,
operational processes and production requirements
[12, 38]. HoQ is the core and focus of QFD. It plays
a fundamental and strategic role in the QFD system.
It can help companies to identify customers’ needs in
the early stage of new product development, and meet
these needs in product planning which will greatly
improve the quality and value of products.
However, QFD is difficult to express the concept
of customers’ subjective uncertainty, which results
in no reliable benefits during the evaluation pro-
cess. To solve the above-mentioned shortcomings,
many scholars introduced fuzzy theory to interpret the
fuzzy semantics of customers, construct a fuzzy cor-
relation matrix between customer needs and technical
characteristics, obtain the real voice of customers and
then produce products that meet customers’ expec-
tations [39–41]. Also, in the fuzzy QFD customer
demand facet, some scholars comprehensively cal-
culated the importance of customer demands by
utilizing Kano model [42], AHP [43] and grey rela-
tional analysis [44] or any two methods, like Kang
et al. [45] integrated fuzzy Kano model and fuzzy
AHP to determine the priority of customer’s Kansei
factors. Keshteli and Davoodvandi [46] incorporated
fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS in fuzzy QFD to
determine the fulfillment level of each design char-
acteristic for maximizing customer satisfaction. But
there are rare articles that applied RST to determine
the weight of customer Kansei demands in the HoQ.
Therefore, in this paper, the crisps values are replaced
based on the application of fuzzy numbers in the
Fig. 2. Four-stage process of QFD.
HoQ. RST is applied to calculate the importance of
the potential aesthetic needs of customers, which is
also the highlight of this paper.
3. The proposed research framework
Figure 3 shows an innovative model to develop
an aesthetic product design which is for customer
satisfaction. Based on RST and fuzzy QFD, it reduces
the core aesthetic quality and determines important
design feature rankings. The experiment is divided
into three phases, which are stated as follows:
1. There is a high frequency of aesthetics quality in
the collected literature; RST is used to calculate
the relationship between aesthetic quality and
customer satisfaction, and obtain the important
degree of core aesthetic quality.
2. Introduce the core aesthetic quality into the
HoQ matrix; make use of fuzzy QFD to
transform the customer’s aesthetic needs into
important technical characteristics to meet cus-
tomers’ preferences and expectations.
3. Integrate the bio-inspired method into the
optimal product form features, and obtain a con-
ceptual model which will rapidly increase the
customers’ aesthetic experience through ques-
tionnaires.
3.1. RST to determine the core aesthetic quality
RST is a mathematical tool to make data analysis
and reasoning [23]. The greatest advantage is that it
can handle the nonlinear and non-normal data, which
is quite similar to human logical reasoning. RST does
not need to rely on any prior knowledge to perform
feature selection and dimension reduction, such as
membership functions in fuzzy theory, probability
distribution in Bayesian methods, and expert weight
attribute in multi-criteria decision-making systems.
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
Fig. 3. Proposed research framework.
Suppose the information system is S = (U, A, V, f )
and U is a finite non-empty set, representing all
records in the database, A is a collection of attributes,
A = C ∪ D, C ∩ D = φ, C is called a conditional
attribute set, D is called a decision attribute set, V
which is a collection of attribute values, f is the
function of attributes and records. The lower approx-
imation set B(X) and the upper approximation set
B(X) are two important concepts of RST. Besides, the
positive domain PosC (D), core attributes Core(C),
dependencies γC (D) and importance degree σ(C,D) (a)
are expressed as follows:
B (X) = {x |x ∈ U, B (x) ⊆ X }
B (X) = {x |x ∈ U, B (x) ∩ X =
/ φ}
POSC (D) = POSC−Cq (D)
Core (C) = ∩Red (C)
|PosC (D)|
γC (D) =
|U|
γC (D) − γC−{a} (D)
σ(C,D) (a) =
γC (D)
If we see the particles that express knowledge
from the definition of the approximate set, the lower
1135
approximation is the combination of all the particles
which are completely contained in the set; the upper
approximation is the combination of all the particles
in the non-intersection; the boundary region of the
set is the difference among upper approximation set
and lower approximation set and the particles. The
positive region PosC (D) is uniquely classified as all
the elements in the blocks U/D. Attribute reduction
refers to find out the degree of dependence between
the condition attribute and decision attribute before
deleting. If the attribute set is dependent, to find out all
possible minimum subsets of the attribute is the focus
of the whole study. The minimum attribute set means
(1) that when the condition attribute set C in the deci-
sion table is unchanged, after removing the Cq from
(2) q condition attribute in C, the positive region which is
obtained before and after the deletion is still the same.
(3) The core refers to the intersection of all the minimum
attribute sets. To determine the importance of a con-
(4) dition variable a, the variable a is typically removed
from the collection C, and then we shall observe the
difference in dependency γC (D) between the attribute
(5) C and the attribute D after removal. If they are the
same, the variable a is called redundant, otherwise,
the attribute a is indispensable in the collection C. The
(6) importance values are distributed between interval
values 0-1. σ(C,D) (a) indicates the importance degree
of the attribute a, a is included in the collection C,
ie, a ∈ C if the importance degree is greater, it means
1136 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment

Table 1
Relation matrix symbols in fuzzy QFD
Symbol Definition Fuzzy numbers
Blank No Relationship (0,0,0)
 Weak Relationship (1,3,5)
 Medium Relationship (3,5,7)
 Strong Relationship (5,7,9)

that the variable a is more indispensable for the whole

system.

3.2. Fuzzy QFD assessment of the relationship

between core aesthetic quality and technical
characteristics

In the evaluation process of fuzzy QFD, the data

import of the requirements facet usually implies the
subjective consciousness of the customers. We firstly
use RST to determine the core aesthetic quality of
the customer and its importance. Secondly, we shall
determine the linkage strength of the relationship
between the customer’s aesthetic needs and techni-
cal characteristics. This study introduces the fuzzy
theory as a measure of semantic scale. Correlation
symbol of Cohen [47] expresses the impact degree
of each matrix,  indicates a weak correlation; 
indicates a medium correlation,  indicates a strong
correlation, if there is no relationship between them,
the blank will not be marked, as it is shown in Table 1.
Each technical feature requires at least a correlation
symbol corresponding to a customer’s demand. If
there is no corresponding one, the technical charac-
teristics must be eliminated.
The basic theory of fuzzy QFD is to make use of
fuzzy numbers to replace the explicit values in the
correlation matrix, which can increase the reliability
of the results. The fuzzy absolute value weight of
the technical characteristics (AĨj ) can be obtained
by fuzzy multiplication calculation. The method is
that the customer demand weight is multiplied by the
correlation symbol of the correlation matrix, and the
absolute weight of the technical features is calculated
after the summation. The defuzzification value AIj
can be obtained by Equation (8). Relative weight RIj
is the normalized value of the defuzzification weight,
and its calculation formula is as follows:

n form design can highly influence the customers’ emo-
AĨj = Wi ⊗ R̃ij
i=1
1 We invite the above ten experts to identify the design
AIj = (AIjL + AIjM + AIjR )
3
Fig. 4. Design features of Blender.
AIj
RIj = m (9)
j=1 AIj
Where AĨj is the fuzzy absolute value of jth
technique characteristic, Wi is the weight of ith
aesthetic quality, and R̃ij is the degree of fuzzy rela-
tionship between ithe technique characteristic and
jthe aesthetic quality. Where i = 1, 2, ..., n, n is the
total number of aesthetic qualities. j = 1, 2, ..., m,
where m is the total number of technique charac-
teristics, ⊗ represents for multiplication operation,
AIjL , AIjM , AIjR represent the left, middle and right
value of the fuzzy number respectively.
4. Case study
This chapter makes use of Blender as an example
to discuss the effectiveness and practicability of the
proposed innovation framework.
4.1. Morphology composition of Blender
As a creative activity of human beings, product
(7) tional cognition and aesthetic satisfaction. Therefore,
it is necessary to determine the important design fea-
tures at the beginning of new product development.
(8) features of Blender, and finally, we extract five key
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment 1137

Fig. 5. Form deconstruction table of Blender.

design features including the lid, handle, container,

body, and button (Fig. 4), and we make a morpholog-
ical analysis method to feature composition. Figure 5
shows the level setting under each feature, there are
a total of 15 items.

4.2. Select the representative samples

60 Blender samples are collected through the Inter-

net, magazines, academic journals, etc. Too many
samples tend to increase the burden on the subjects.
Therefore, after removing samples with too high sim-
ilarity and blurred pixels, the KJ method shall be
used to the group and then we select representa-
tive samples from the group to make a 10 × 10 cm
image. This study mainly explores the relationship
between product aesthetic design and morphological
Fig. 6. Representative Blender samples.
characteristics, regardless of the color and material
influences, so the background and color gradation can
be removed, and 12 representative Blender samples
will be finally obtained (Fig. 6).
1138 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment

Table 2
Decision table
U Original Elegant Modern Concise Fashionable Comfortable Enjoyable Satisfaction
1 4.40 4.42 4.95 5.65 4.56 5.07 4.67 5.30
2 4.49 3.67 4.49 3.98 4.07 4.05 3.93 4.58
3 4.30 4.28 4.65 4.95 4.35 4.19 4.09 4.74
4 4.30 4.35 4.60 5.07 4.42 4.70 4.47 5.07
5 5.30 4.53 5.05 4.51 5.16 4.79 4.79 5.07
6 4.42 3.91 4.56 4.51 4.28 4.35 4.16 4.60
7 3.93 3.56 3.81 3.98 3.77 3.95 3.72 4.02
8 4.86 5.05 5.07 5.23 5.07 5.00 5.07 5.35
9 4.53 4.40 4.91 4.74 4.65 4.95 4.60 4.98
10 5.16 4.77 5.14 5.09 4.93 4.86 4.77 5.16
11 4.49 3.67 4.47 3.47 3.88 3.79 3.77 3.95
12 4.53 3.98 4.56 4.23 4.28 4.40 4.23 4.67

Table 3 Table 4
Interval division method Discrete decision table
Attributes Interval Discrete value Definition U C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 D
C1 [1, 4.42) 1 Low 1 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
[4.42, 4.8) 2 Medium 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2
[4.8, 7) 3 High 3 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
C2 [1, 3.95) 1 Low 4 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3
[3.95, 4.42) 2 Medium 5 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 2
[4.42, 7) 3 High 6 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 1
C3 [1, 4.5) 1 Low 7 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
[4.5, 4.8) 2 Medium 8 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 3
[4.8, 7) 3 High 9 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 2
C4 [1, 4.5) 1 Low 10 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2
[4.5, 5) 2 Medium 11 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
[5, 7) 3 High 12 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2
C5 [1, 4.2) 1 Low
[4.2, 4.5) 2 Medium
[4.5, 7) 3 High
C6 [1, 4.2) 1 Low “original”, “elegant”, “modern”, “concise”, “fashion-
[4.2, 4.8) 2 Medium able”, “comfortable”, and “enjoyable” are defined
[4.8, 7) 3 High
C7 [1, 4.1) 1 Low
as collections C = {C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7},
[4.1, 4.65) 2 Medium and decision attributes of customer satisfaction are
[4.65, 7) 3 High defined as D, and the final results are shown in
D [1, 4.6) 1 Low Table 4.
[4.6, 5) 2 Medium
[5, 7) 3 High
4.3.1. Get core aesthetic quality
Apply the reduction concept of RST, the typical
4.3. RST to determine the core aesthetic quality classification can be classified as follows according
and its importance degree to the attribute reduction algorithm which is executed
against Table 4:
Based on RST, we shall bring the conditional
attributes and decision attributes to the seven aes- U/Ind(C1) = {{1, 3, 7}, {2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12}, {5, 8, 10}}
thetic qualities and consumer satisfaction. Then, we
U/Ind(C2) = {{1, 5, 8, 10}, {2, 6, 7, 11}, {3, 4, 9, 12}}
use the 7-point Likert scale in the form of a web
questionnaire and make emotional evaluations on 100 U/Ind(C3) = {{1, 5, 8, 9, 10}, {2, 7, 11}, {3, 4, 6, 12}}
high-involved customers (50 males and 50 females).
U/Ind(C4) = {{1, 4, 8, 10}, {2, 6, 7, 11, 12}, {3, 5, 9}}
The final mean values are shown in Table 2.
Since RST can only handle discrete values, we U/Ind(C5) = {{1, 5, 8, 9, 10}, {2, 7, 11}, {3, 4, 6, 12}}
need to use the expert-defined interval partition
U/Ind(C6) = {{1, 9, 10}, {2, 3, 7, 11}, {4, 5, 6, 8, 12}}
method (Table 3) to convert the original values
into type values, assuming the conditional attributes U/Ind(C7) = {{1, 5, 8, 10}, {2, 3, 7, 11}, {4, 6, 9, 12}}
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment 1139

Table 5
The importance of core aesthetic qualities
C1 C2 C4 C6
Weights 0.3 0.2 0.4 0.2

U/Ind(C) = {{1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12}, {2, 11}}

U/Ind(D) = {{1, 4, 8}, {2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12}, {6, 7, 11}}

According to Equations (1–3), the positive region

can be obtained by removing C from each condi-
tion attribute. If it is the same as the positive region
PosC (D), it means that the attribute C is not important
and can be deleted from the set. Conversely, if it is not
the same with the positive region of PosC (D), then
the attribute C is considered to be the core aesthetic
quality.
PosC (D) = {1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12}
PosC−C1 (D) = {3,4,5,6,8,9,12} =
/ PosC (D)
PosC−C2 (D) = {1,3,4,5,7,8,9,10} =
/ PosC (D)
Fig. 7. Network graph of core aesthetic attributes associated with
PosC−C3 (D) = {1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12} = PosC (D) customer satisfaction.

PosC−C4 (D) = {1,3,6,7,9,10} =

/ PosC (D)
PosC−C5 (D) = {1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12} = PosC (D)
PosC−C6 (D) = {1,3,4,5,6,7,9,12} =
/ PosC (D)
PosC−C7 (D) = {1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12} = PosC (D)
By comparison, the conditional attributes
C1, C2, C4, C6 are indispensable, and the con-
ditional attributes C3, C5, C7 are dispensable,
so the core aesthetic quality can be obtained as
Core = {C1, C2, C4, C6}.
4.3.2. Determining the importance degree of the
core aesthetic quality
According to Equation 4, we can calculate the
importance degree of core aesthetic quality, known
|PosC (D)| = 10, so the importance degree of the con-
dition attribute C1 is 0.3. Similarly, the weights of
other core aesthetic qualities are shown in Table 5.
4.3.3. Association strength among network
graph representing attributes
In order to show the correlation among various
attributes more intuitively, we apply graphic expres-
sion of the Clementine software in the field of data
mining. Set the link more than three times to be the
strong association, connect the nodes between the
two attributes with the thickest line; set the connec-
tion by three times as the middle association, connect
it with the medium-thick lines; the links which are
under three times are called the weak associations,
they are connected by the finest lines, as shown in
Fig. 7. There are two strong associations, 13 medium
associations and 52 weak associations. If the con-
dition attribute is the antecedent and the decision
attribute is the consequent, we can get six related data,
namely “C43 ⇒ D3”, “C12 ⇒ D2”, “C22 ⇒ D2”,
“C42 ⇒ D2”, “C21 ⇒ D1”, “C41 ⇒ D1”.
4.4. Design features ranking of fuzzy QFD
Through the last stage, we can obtain the core aes-
thetic quality and the importance of the four Blenders,
and we can bring them into the customer demand facet
of the fuzzy correlation matrix. Besides, the prod-
uct morphological features and the levels which are
obtained in Fig. 5 can be brought into the technical
feature surface of the matrix. We invite the above ten
experts to form a focus group to compare the corre-
lation strength of the customer’s aesthetic needs with
the design features, and then we input the unified
opinions into the matrix (as it is shown in Table 6).
Based on the Equations (7)–(8), the priority order
of development features and their weights are cal-
culated, and the designers are assisted to create new
products that meet the aesthetic needs of customers,
thereby it can rapidly improve customer satisfaction.
1140 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment

Table 6
Fuzzy QFD incidence matrix table
A Lid B Handle C Container D Body E Button

A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3 C1 C2 C3 D1 D2 D3 E1 E2 E3

Aesthetics needs Importance Rank

Original  Ƹ Ƽ   ƻ  Ƹ Ƽ  Ƽ   Ƹ ƻ 2

Elegant Ƹ Ƽ  ƻ Ƹ  ƻ  Ƹ Ƹ Ƽ  Ƽ   3

Concise  ƻ  ƻ Ƹ  ƻ Ƽ  Ƹ  ƻ Ƽ ƻ  1

Comfortable Ƽ Ƹ Ƹ  Ƽ  Ƹ Ƽ   ƻ Ƹ Ƹ ƻ Ƹ 3

Absolute weight
2.0

4.9

2.7

3.0

3.2

1.5

3.6

5.1

2.7

1.8

4.5

2.6

4.8

3.9

2.1
Relative weight %
0.041

0.101

0.056

0.062

0.066

0.031

0.074

0.105

0.056

0.037

0.093

0.054

0.099

0.081

0.043
Rank
13 2 9 8 7 15 6 1 9 14 4 11 3 5 12

Fig. 8. Product association map.

4.5. Design verification phological combinations of A2, B2, C2, D2, and E1
which are obtained by fuzzy QFD as the design ref-
To further verify the actual improvement ability erence, and then we use the bionics concept to make
of the proposed method, we apply the optimal mor- creative association, provide the structure and char-
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment 1141

acteristics of the simulated organism to make design
structure of engineering technology including the fol-
lowing six steps [48]:
The first step: Product style determination
According to the calculation results of the core aes-
thetic qualities of importance degree, we select two
high-important image styles of “concise” and “orig-
inal” to focus on the superior resources and quickly
improve customer satisfaction. We invite six focus
group members to try to divergence and intuitively
associate the bionic forms in nature.
The second step: Product style association
This stage mainly describes “concise”, “origi-
nal” basic style information, landscape associations
and biological associations by vocabularies or para-
graphs. We invite experts to regard these two
Kansei vocabularies as the origin of divergence;
we shall associate with their educational back-
ground and knowledge experience. The recorders
nearby will quickly record the results of the
expert dictation. For example, Expert 1 gives
associations such as mountains, grasshoppers, but-
terflies, and penguins; Expert 2 associates with
a Ferris wheel, coconut tree, owl, swimming
jellyfish, etc...
The third step: Product association map collection
Through the description of the related words in
step two, we can find the corresponding association
map through web search engines such as Google and
Yahoo, and the related pictures are summarized as it
is shown in Fig. 8.
Step 4: Product feature capture
Through the collection of image association map
associations, we can extract key design features from
the leafy leaves of coconut trees, the thick and fat
body of penguins and the flapping wings of but-
terflies. Designers use art processing and refining
to simplify themselves. Those can provide a steady
stream of creative inspiration; the specific effects are
shown in Table 7.
Step 5: Sketching
Based on the “concise” and “original” imagery
styles which are formed by key design features of

Table 7
Association graph feature captures
Landscape or organism Image association diagrams Feature capture

Coconut tree Lush and thick branches

Penguin Thick and fact body

Butterfly Flapping wings

1142 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment

Table 8
Creative sketching
Landscape or organism Creative sketch

Coconut tree

Penguin

Butterfly

coconut trees, penguins and butterflies, we make a Step 6: Construct a 3D digital model
combination of the sketches that are drawn by the At this stage, we invite the members of focus
designers’ aesthetic experience and subjective emo- group again to subjectively evaluate the three creative
tions (Table 8). sketches, and finally, we select the fusion creative
 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
Fig. 9. New designed Blender.
Fig. 10. Evaluation results of aesthetic demands.
sketch of a butterfly to create 3D digital graphics. We
determine the most appropriate product form ratio
and detail features by fuzzy QFD derived parameters.
Then, we rely on the Rhino software to construct the
shape of the Blender which is shown in Fig. 9.
To evaluate the customer’s preference for the new
design of Blender, this study invites 60 subjects to
view the core aesthetic qualities and satisfaction eval-
uation with the 7-point Likert scale. The results show
that customers’ aesthetic satisfaction is up to 6.28.
Other aesthetic evaluations are significantly higher
than five points (Fig. 10), indicating that the proposed
combination of the study does provide some helps
for designer’s creative ideas and quickly improve the
customers’ aesthetic satisfaction degree.
4.6. Results and discussion
During the process of applying RST to reduce the
aesthetic qualities of Blender, we find four core aes-
thetic qualities. Among them, the “concise” (0.4)
weight value is the highest, followed by “original”
(0.3), then “elegant” (0.2) and finally “comfortable”
(0.2), indicating that the concise form style is the eas-
iest to evoke the aesthetic experience with customers
and it is a key factor influencing customer purchas-
ing decisions. The original shape creates a refreshing
pleasure that inspires the customer’s creativity and
visual interest. Also, “elegant” and “comfortable”
1143
emotions bring Blender into a warm home environ-
ment, adding a pleasant atmosphere to live. On the
contrary, “modern”, “fashionable” and “enjoyable”
have no significant impacts on customer satisfaction,
so there is no need to emphasize it too much during
the design creation.
During the operation flow of fuzzy QFD, we can
find that the design feature of the first sorting is
C2, accounting for 10.5% according to the operation
result of the correlation matrix; the second one is A2,
accounting for 10.1%; the third one is E1, account-
ing for 9.9%, indicating that the cylindrical container
design can best meet the aesthetic needs of consumers
because of its simple and generous appearance. The
sleek transition on the cup lid gives the customer
an elegant temperament. The round button can also
best meet the customers’ aesthetic expectations. We
make a comprehensive observation of the evaluation.
In the handle part, B2’s modeling weight value is
6.6%, which is the highest. In the body part, the D2
shape has the highest weight, accounting for 9.3%.
To obtain the maximum aesthetic satisfaction of cus-
tomers, we combine the maximum weight values of
each design feature, namely A2, B2, C2, D2, E1,
which can not only obtain the aesthetic quality opti-
mization design, but also can save production costs
and enhance the working efficiency of the designers.
Finally, the bio-inspired method is integrated into the
process of KE. We determine that the butterfly shape
concept can best meet the aesthetic needs of cus-
tomers according to the key features of the coconut
trees, penguins and butterflies of the experts. This
result proves that the traditional KE method is not
enough to know the mapping relationship between
customer Kansei and product form elements. It is also
necessary to introduce new creative ideas to stimu-
late the creativity of designers and better enhance the
aesthetic satisfaction of customers.
In the process of traditional customer emotion
design, many linear methods, such as factor analy-
sis, principal component analysis and quantification
theory type I, are difficult to accurately obtain the
non-linear characteristics of customer perception.
Some artificial intelligence methods, such as genetic
algorithm, neural network and grey system theory,
are widely used in Kansei mapping. Unfortunately,
the defect of the genetic algorithm is that only a small
amount of optimum solution can be calculated. Neu-
ral network is usually blamed for the lack of logical
reasoning, and grey system has larger errors in certain
design settings or research issues [49]. In comparison,
RST can perform attribute reduction and significance
1144 X. Kang / Aesthetic product design combining with rough set theory and fuzzy quality function deployment
calculation on design features without any prior infor-
mation, and it can obtain key Kansei information in
the database with the advantage of small computa-
tion amount and high reduction rate. Fuzzy QFD also
takes the merit of fuzzy membership function to trans-
form customers’ subjective imprecise emotion into
specific product design planning.
5. Conclusions and prospects
The hyper-competitive global market environment
leads to a shortened product life cycle and time-to-
market pressures. To make the product stand out in a
functionally equivalent dilemma, we must consider
consumers’ taste of the product before launching
it, and then we can accurately predict the products
which will meet their subjective quality of aesthetics.
Compared with the traditional product design method
based on the subjective experience of designers, this
paper proposes an innovative model in combination
of RST and fuzzy QFD to explore the relationship
between product aesthetic quality and design fea-
tures. Besides, the bionics method is used to integrate
the best product form design combination to obtain
more creative and vivid design scheme. The main
contributions include the followings:
• RST is used to reduce related attributes and
explore the core aesthetic qualities with the
importance degree of the Blender.
• Fuzzy QFD determines the association between
customer aesthetic qualities and the character-
istics of product form, and also prioritizes the
development rank of the design features.
• The concept of bionics is integrated into the pro-
cess of KE to achieve a more open, vivid and
natural product form design.
• It helps manufacturers to understand consumers’
emotional preferences and reflections on prod-
uct aesthetics, thus making them improve their
product quality. They will make improvements
in attraction and design management which will
provide consumer-oriented decision support for
future product development strategies.
Although our proposed model can be extended
to aesthetic quality designs of other products to
increase sales and incomes in the new product market,
there are inevitably some limitations that need to be
improved during the research: (1) The aesthetic expe-
rience is an aesthetic insight that is fuzzy uncertainty
and difficult to express in accurate words. Therefore,
the seven aesthetic qualities which are selected in
this paper can inevitably subject to partiality. Also,
the quality of aesthetics shifts according to the times,
and the definition of aesthetic quality needs to be con-
stantly updated. (2) Morphological analysis method
cannot deconstruct the new products that have not yet
been introduced into the market. Therefore, designers
are required to keep an eye on the latest develop-
ment trends in products. (3) The fuzzy correlation
matrix inside the HoQ processes is based on the sen-
timent data with Kansei variables, but after all, it is
the weight plus the total calculation of the relationship
between customer demands and design elements. In
the future, it is recommended to use grey relational
analysis or entropy weight calculation to classify the
importance sequence of the design features.
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