Engineering emotional values in product design simon schütte

Engineering Emotional Values in Product Design
-Kansei Engineering in Development
Simon Schütte

Linköping, 2005

Linköping Studies in Science and Technology, Dissertation 951 Quality Technology and Management Quality and Human-Systems Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering SE-58183 Linköping

Printed by: UniTryck, Linköping Linköpings Universitet Department of MechanicalEngineering ISBN 91-85299-46-4 ISSN 0345-7524 Cover Design: Rilda Schütte Figures: Rilda Schütte © 2005, Simon Schütte Distributed by: Linköpings Universitet Division of Quality Technology and Management Department of Mechanical Engineering SE-58183 Linköping, Sweden Tel: +46-13-28 2448 Kansei Engineering Group: http://www.ikp.liu.se/kansei

Abstract
Feelings and impressions of a product areimportant for the decision of purchasing it or not. Designing attractive products therefore requires knowledge about the feelings and impressions the products evoke on the customer and the user. Integrating such affective values in product design requires the introduction of suitable methods into companies’ product design processes, methods which can capture and convert subjective and even unconsciousfeelings about a product into concrete design parameters. This is sometimes referred to as ‘Affective Engineering’. One methodology in this context is Kansei Engineering, which has been developed in Japan in order to design feelings into products. The aim of this thesis was twofold: Firstly, to improve understanding of the nature of products making emotional impact on the users and customers.Secondly, to identify and improve methods capable of grasping those affective values and translating them into concrete product design solutions. This thesis presents three empirical studies and two methodological papers, relating to warehouse trucks and laminate flooring. The first study was made on user impact of warehouse trucks in three different European countries. A second study dealt withaffective values of rocker-switches in work vehicles, such as warehouse trucks. A third study on this truck type compared the old manoeuvring panel evaluated in the previous studies with a newly introduced manoeuvring panel in order to validate the impact of the design improvements made after the first study. Further, a conceptual model on Kansei Engineering methodology was proposed in a methods paperbased on the experience from the studies performed in order to provide a structure for performing Kansei Engineering studies. The fifth paper had the purpose of validating and improving the proposed model using laminate flooring as research object. More structured ways of identifying design parameters and relevant product properties was given high priority in the improvement work of themethodology. A model for spanning the Space of Product Properties was presented and applied. This thesis also deals with other improvement areas in the methodology and proposed new developments, including the use of scales, experimental design and validation methods. In conclusion, Kansei Engineering is a concept and a methodology in strong development, a framework in which tools and methods are continuouslydeveloped, added and integrated.

i

Acknowledgements
Doing research is always an adventure which can not be mastered alone. On my journey towards this thesis, I met many people who travelled with me a while and supported me in both professional and private areas. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you. In particular I am grateful to my supervisor Professor JörgenEklund and by cosupervisors Professor Jens Jörn Dahlgaard and Professor Mitsuo Nagamachi, Hiroshima International University, Japan for supervision, encouragement, enthusiasm and most important interest in my work. Moreover I would like to thank Professor Gunnela Westlander, Professor Mats Lörstad and Dr. Jan Axelsson, Division of Quality and Human Systems Engineering at Linköping University for...