How the Kano model contributes to Kansei engineering in services

Recent studies show that products and services hold great appeal if they are attractively designed to elicit emotional feelings from customers. Kansei engineering (KE) has good potential to provide a competitive advantage to those able to read and translate customer affect and emotion in actual product and services. This study introduces an integrative framework of the Kano model and KE, applied to services. The Kano model was used and inserted into KE to exhibit the relationship between service attribute performance and customer emotional response. Essentially, the Kano model categorises service attribute quality into three major groups (must-be [M], one-dimensional [O] and attractive [A]). The findings of a case study that involved 100 tourists who stayed in luxury 4- and 5-star hotels are presented. As a practical matter, this research provides insight on which service attributes deserve more attention with regard to their significant impact on customer emotional needs.

Statement of Relevance: Apart from cognitive evaluation, emotions and hedonism play a big role in service encounters. Through a focus on delighting qualities of service attributes, this research enables service providers and managers to establish the extent to which they prioritise their improvement efforts and to always satisfy their customer emotions beyond expectation.     

Applying Kansei engineering to industrial machinery trade show booth design

Trade shows are considered an important marketing channel for companies since they provide manufacturers and purchasers with a vital commercial platform. Traditionally, plastics and rubber industry trade shows have been ineffective due to poor booth planning. Nevertheless, few studies have examined trade show booth design and planning. Actually, most companies lack distinct goals, and their decisions regarding trade show participation may influence decisions regarding which products should be demonstrated, size of trade booth, and level of advertising. Such a decision-making is a problem involving multi-criteria decisions, and requires a logical and objective operating procedure. This work thus devises an objective procedure for trade show. This investigation focuses on booth design for plastics and rubber industry trade shows and comprises three parts: (1) selecting appropriate assessment criteria for trade show design using the Delphi method and Kansei engineering. (2) Establishing suitable booth design principles and procedures for plastics and rubber industry trade show using fuzzy product positioning. (3) Further employing the proposed method to design trade show booths and verify their performance. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Relevance to industry

This study was conducted to support machinery vendors as a systematic design flow chart and related criteria to provide an objective approach to trade show booth planning.     

How to improve computer advisory services

There are an increasing number of active computer users who are not computer professionals and so require continuous guidance in order to effectively employ computer facilities. In universities such guidance is provided by a formal advisory service. While advisory services play a vital role for university users, there are numerous problems which can detract from their effectiveness. This paper identifies many of these problems, and recommends ways of overcoming them. These suggestions are largely based on the results of a research project carried out for the past four years at the University of Liverpool. Topics considered are: (i) the assessment of various methods for organizing advisory services; (ii) the specific needs of inexpert users and strategies for effectively advising them; (iii) problems of the comprehension of computing information; (iv) guidelines for good advisory communication; (v) methods for improving the professional status of the advisory function.     

Kano’s model in Kansei Engineering to evaluate subjective real estate consumer preferences

Kansei Engineering is a product development tool used to identify users’ perceptions and find quantitative relationships between their subjective responses and design features. This paper proposes the use of Kano’s model in this process to analyse the impact of different subjective attributes on consumers’ purchase decisions. A practical example of real estate promotions design is presented. In the first stage, semantic differential is used to measure the subjective component of the emotional state. In the second stage, regression analysis and Kano’s model are used to define the relative weight of each emotional attribute in the purchase decision. Besides linear attributes, Kano’s model identified two other kinds of attributes that present a non-linear performance: basic attributes and exciting attributes. Therefore linear models could underestimate the effect of such kind of attributes.

Relevance to industry

This information is very relevant for architects and designers as it enables them to determine the extent to which they must direct their efforts at improving certain attributes with the object of improving the global evaluation.     

如何在工业自动化中使用Web服务

这篇文章将介绍新一代的因特网Web Services（Web服务），包括其背景技术、如何影响工业自动化行业以及为此行业带来哪些相关的效益。     

软件工程人才的培养思路

本文结合南京邮电大学软件学院培养软件工程人才的实践经验,分析了计算机科学研究人才和软件工程人才的区别,探讨了如何培养高素质的软件工程人才,如何将理论教学体系与实践教学体系相结合,最后说明在实际教学环节中总结出的教学方法。     

Constructing a hybrid Kansei engineering system based on multiple affective responses: Application to product form design

This study proposes an expert system, which is called hybrid Kansei engineering system (HKES) based on multiple affective responses (MARs), to facilitate the development of product form design. HKES is consists of two sub-systems, namely forward Kansei engineering system (FKES) and backward Kansei engineering system (BKES). FKES is utilized to generate product alternatives and BKES is utilized to predict affective response of new product designs. Although the idea of HKES and similar hybrid systems have already been applied in various fields, such as product design, engineering design, and system optimization, most of existing methodologies are limited by searching optimal design solutions using single-objective optimization (SOO), instead of multi-objective optimization (MOO). Hence the applicability of HKES is limited while adapting to real-world problems, such as product form design discussed in this paper. To overcome this shortcoming, this study integrates the methodologies of support vector regression (SVR) and multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) into the scheme of HEKS. BKES was constructed by training SVR prediction model of every single affective response (SAR). The form features of these product samples were treated as input data while the average utility scores obtained from all the consumers were used as output values. FKES generates optimal design alternatives using the MOGA-based searching method according to MARs specified by a product designer as the system supervisor. A case study of mobile phone design was given to demonstrate the analysis results. The proposed HKES based on MARs can be applied to a wide variety of product design problems, as well as other MOO problems involving with subjective human perceptions.     

由感性工学浅析建立设计统计学

随着计算机技术的不断发展,简化了传统统计学的计算过程,使统计技术得到更广泛的应用,并且促使其应用学科得到前所未有的发展。本研究旨在探讨在感性工学的基础上将其中原统计学的研究分析方法进行系统化的整理;并加入统计学的基础知识,参照医学、生物、工程等统计学,尝试建立完整的设计统计学的知识体系,从而为工业设计理论和方法的发展提供一个新的思路。     

A heuristics-based approach to reverse engineering of electronic services

Since the beginning of the electronic era, public administrations and enterprises have been developing services, through which citizens, businesses and customers can conduct their transactions with the offering entity. Each electronic service contains a substantial amount of knowledge in the form help texts, rules of use or legislation excerpts, examples, validation checks, etc. This knowledge has been extracted from domain experts when the services were developed, especially in the phases of analysis and design, and was subsequently translated into software. In the latter format though, knowledge cannot be readily used in organizational processes, such as knowledge sharing and development of new services. In this paper, we present an approach for reverse engineering electronic services in order to create knowledge items of high levels of abstraction, which can be used in knowledge sharing environments as well as in service development platforms. The proposed approach has been implemented and configured to generate artifacts for the SmartGov service development platform. Finally, an evaluation of the proposed approach is presented to assess its efficiency regarding various aspects of the reverse engineering process.     

How to identify the trends of services: GTM-TT service map

Recently, due to the explosive increase of services, firms have faced with challenges to analyze patterns and trends in services in an intuitive but objective ways. The notion of service map can be adapted to this end. Maps, in general, have been receiving a great deal of attention because of their potential as visualization tools that can allow people to visualize massive amounts of information. Specifically, the generative topographic mapping through time (GTM-TT) algorithm is suitable for dynamic analysis since GTM-TT provides a time-based clustering and change path. In response, this study proposes an approach for developing and using GTM-TT service maps consisting of a service clustering map and a service sequence map for analyzing service trends. The proposed approach, broadly, is comprised of four steps: (1) the construction of a database, (2) data preprocessing, (3) development of a GTM-TT service map, and (4) interpretation. The proposed approach is expected to aid in the identification of dynamic service trends.     

Optima: a domain-specific model for prioritization and conflicts management in requirements engineering for services intermediaries

New business models are set up, thanks to Web technologies. In this work, we focus on services intermediary companies. They generate value through the (automatic) selection of third-party services and the (automatic) delivery of the combinations of these services to consumers. Such companies face the problem of deciding which services to select and deliver in order to maximize their profit. The two main paper objectives are (i) to design the generic business model of services intermediaries and (ii) to propose an optimization model. The latter enables to choose the consumer requirements that will be satisfied in order to maximize profit. This model ranks implementable solutions based on various financial aspects. They are related to cost and revenue information that is associated with the requirements. It can support the decision-making process that aims at selecting a profit-maximizing set of requirements for services intermediaries’ system-to-be. Indeed, the proposed model solves the conflicts between requirements and prioritizes the optional requirements. We argue for the relevance of the optimization model via an example and simulations.     

A dominance-based rough set approach to Kansei Engineering in product development

Keen competitions in the global market have led product development to a more knowledge-intensive activity than ever, which requires not only tremendous expert knowledge but also effective analysis of design information. Kansei Engineering as a customer-oriented methodology for product development, often has to analyse imprecise design information inherent with nonlinearity and uncertainty. This paper proposes a systematic approach to Kansei Engineering based on the dominance-based rough set theory. Two novel concepts known as category score and partition quality have been developed and incorporated into the proposed approach. The new approach proposed is able to identify and analyse two types of inconsistencies caused by indiscernibility relations and dominance principles respectively. The result of an illustrative case study shows that the proposed approach can effectively extract Kansei knowledge from imprecise design information, and it can be easily integrated into an expert system for customer-oriented product development.     

Quality function deployment implementation based on Fuzzy Kano model: An application in PLM system

Product lifecycle management (PLM), a strategic business system allows more effective communication among different groups at dispersed locations to share ideas and access information needed for developing new products and executing innovative processes. The main function of PLM is to develop an attractive system which ensures customer satisfaction. Therefore, one of the important topics of the PLM system developments is to take customer requirements into consideration. Quality function deployment (QFD) has been widely used for numerous years; it is one of the structured methodologies that are used to translate customer needs into specific quality development. However, in the traditional QFD approach, each element’s interdependence and customer requirements are usually not systematically treated. Additionally, the Kano model can effectively classify customer demand attributes, but to make Kano model more objective in the course of weighing, we have also included Fuzzy mode in our discussion. This study presents an integrative approach by incorporating the Kano model with Fuzzy mode into the matrix of QFD and adjusting customer requirement weights. This approach can fulfill two objectives, First, through the Kano model with the Fuzzy mode, it will not only discriminate out options for the required attributes in much more breadth but also simultaneously render the discretions on the linguistic implications much more accurate with the aid of the ambiguous questionnaire response method. Second, combining the Kano model and QFD, can not only provide a new way to optimize the product design but can also enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, and minimize dissatisfaction. The proposed methods can be useful to both practitioners and researchers. To illustrate our findings, we have incorporated an example which suggests that the proposed approach can contribute to the creation of attractive PLM attributes and PLM innovation.     

感性意象采集方法的比较研究

伴随着社会的发展,产品设计中的感性要素日益受到人们重视,感性意象获取方法作为产品感性设计的重要研究内容,也不断得到发展和改进。文章通过对国内外产品感性意象采集方法的综合分析,探讨感性意象研究的方法和关键技术,并对各项技术的实际应用做了对比分析;同时,文章分析了感性意象采集方法的未来发展方向。     

A systematic approach to the Kansei factors of tactile sense regarding the surface roughness

Designing products to satisfy customers' emotion requires the information gathered through the human senses, which are visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile senses. By controlling certain design factors, customers' emotion can be evaluated, designed, and satisfied. In this study, a systematic approach is proposed to study the tactile sense regarding the surface roughness. Numerous pairs of antonymous tactile adjectives are collected and clustered. The optimal number of adjective clusters is estimated based on the several criterion functions. The representative average preferences of the final clusters are obtained as the estimates of engineering parameters to control the surface roughness of the commercial polymer-based products.     

感性微分法在产品设计中的探讨

感性工学是将感性与工学相结合的一种技术,其在产品设计中的应用,主要通过分析人的感性来建立产品构想模型,并据此来设计产品。感性微分法是感性工学中的一种定性研究方法,这种方法可以通过感性概念的逐步细分从而和设计元素建立起一一对应关系,本文试图应用感性微分法在产品设计中的作用进行探讨,并以行李箱的拉杆设计为例就感性微分法的应用进行探讨。     

Database reverse engineering: From the relational to the binary relationship model

This paper describes an algorithmic method for transforming a relational database schema to a binary-relationship one. The source schema may consist of relations that are at any level of normalization, and the designer may add semantic information on the source schema, such as the definition of candidate keys, foreign keys, functional dependencies of various types, multi-valued dependencies, many-to-many constraints, inclusion dependencies, and others. Based on this information, the multi-stage transformation algorithm applies mapping rules to generate object-types, binary-relationships and constraints in the target conceptual schema. The method is implemented as a PC-based tool, utilizing Ingres, SQL and C, and is part of a comprehensive database design tool for both forward and reverse engineering.     

Requirements engineering for multi-channel services: the SEB method and its application to a multi-channel bank

The widespread usage of technology for service provision to customers has created a new and challenging environment for the design of interactive systems, with the emergence of technology enabled multi-channel services. Requirements engineers involved in the design of such service systems must actively work together with interaction designers and service managers to better integrate customer service experience and technology components, requiring unifying methods and tools within the emerging field of service science management and engineering. This paper proposes the service experience blueprint (SEB), a multidisciplinary method for the design of technology enabled multi-channel service systems and illustrates its application in two examples of redesign of banking services that involved an extensive study with more than 4,000 bank customers. The SEB method is based on concepts and tools from RE and interaction design, such as goal-oriented analysis and conceptual modeling, but also uses methods developed in the service and marketing fields, such as service blueprinting. SEB brings marketing research methods to the requirements process, as they can provide a useful contribution for the elicitation of customer experience requirements in service environments. By bringing together goal-oriented modeling and use case modeling from requirements engineering, with service blueprinting from service design, the SEB method contributes to creating a shared understanding and a unifying language to better support the design of new technology enabled multi-channel service systems, where technology and service issues are deeply intertwined.     

How to decentralize decisions through GRAI model in production management

Our Laboratory has been working in the field of Production Management for over a decade. Our research has been made in a pragmatic way, alternating analyses on the ground, research for solutions to formulated problems and experiments of possible solutions back on the ground.We have particularly looked into the structure of Production Management Systems (PMS) because we have noticed the lack in existing of a global model and the difficulty in drawing up some specifications for these systems.During our research of a global structure, we have been quickly faced with a lack of PMS efficiency in driving the physical system. The complexity of this structure led us to split it up into more and more simple elements drawing our approach from MELESE concepts [1].But ASHBY concepts dealing with variety have led us to split up again and to decentralize decision centers in order to make possible the driving of PMS [2].In this paper we will present the model which has allowed us to design a specific PMS organized into a hierarchy with a decentralized decision center.     

基于服务等级的网格计算池模型

目前网格在应用中,常用网格计算池模型的方式,针对传统分布式网格模型和单一资源服务网格计算池模型所存在的缺点,提出了一种改进的基于服务等级的网格计算池模型,其基本思想是当"计算池"中有多余的空闲计算资源时,按照服务等级的思想,为用户分配多台计算机为其服务.对自己的改进方案思想,设计流程、服务级数的设置、初始化连接设置等主要的参数选取进行了详细的说明.经过分析可知,与原方案相比,本方案兼顾了两种方案的优点,支持服务分级和计费机制,可以充分利用网络资源,提高较大计算量用户的计算效率和运营效率.