Kansei engineering

Kansei engineering (Japanese: 感性工学 kansei kougaku, emotional or affective engineering) aims at the development or improvement of products and services by translating the customer's psychological feelings and needs into the domain of product design (i.e. parameters). It was founded by Mitsuo Nagamachi, professor emeritus of Hiroshima University (also former Dean of Hiroshima International University and CEO of International Kansei Design Institute). Kansei engineering parametrically links the customer's emotional responses (i.e. physical and psychological) to the properties and characteristics of a product or service. In consequence, products can be designed to bring forward the intended feeling. It has been adopted as one of the topics for professional development by the Royal Statistical Society.

Kansei engineering (Japanese: 感性工学 kansei kougaku, emotional or affective engineering) aims at the development or improvement of products and services by translating the customer's psychological feelings and needs into the domain of product design (i.e. parameters). It was founded by Mitsuo Nagamachi, professor emeritus of Hiroshima University (also former Dean of Hiroshima International University and CEO of International Kansei Design Institute). Kansei engineering parametrically links the customer's emotional responses (i.e. physical and psychological) to the properties and characteristics of a product or service. In consequence, products can be designed to bring forward the intended feeling. It has been adopted as one of the topics for professional development by the Royal Statistical Society. ==Introduction== Product design has become increasingly complex as products contain more functions and have to meet increasing demands such as user-friendliness, manufacturability and ecological considerations. With a shortened product lifecycle, development costs are likely to increase. Since errors in the estimations of market trends can be very expensive, companies therefore perform benchmarking studies that compare with competitors on strategic, process, marketing, and product levels. However, success in a certain market segment not only requires knowledge about the competitors and the performance of competing products, but also about the impressions which a product leaves to the customer. The latter requirement becomes much more important as products and companies are becoming mature. Customers purchase products based on subjective terms such as brand image, reputation, design, impression etc.. A large number of manufacturers have started to consider such subjective properties and develop their products in a way that conveys the company image. A reliable instrument is therefore needed: an instrument which can predict the reception of a product on the market before the development costs become too large. This demand has triggered the research dealing with the translation of the customer's subjective, hidden needs into concrete products. Research is done foremost in Asia, including Japan and Korea. In Europe, a network has been forged under the 6th EU framework. This network refers to the new research field as "emotional design" or "affective engineering". ==Software tools== Kansei engineering has always been a statistically and mathematically advanced methodology. Most types require good expert knowledge and a reasonable amount of experience to carry out the studies sufficiently. This has also been the major obstacle for a widespread application of Kansei engineering. In order to facilitate application some software packages have been developed in the recent years, most of them in Japan. There are two different types of software packages available: User consoles and data collection and analysis tools. User consoles are software programs that calculate and propose a product design based on the users' subjective preferences (Kanseis). However, such software requires a database that quantifies the connections between Kanseis and the combination of product attributes. For building such databases, data collection and analysis tools can be used. This part of the paper demonstrates some of the tools. There are many more tools used in companies and universities, which might not be available to the public. User consoles Ph.D thesis on Kansei Engineering (europe) Ph.D thesis on Website Emotional UX and Kansei Engineering The Japan Society of Kansei Engineering The Malaysian Research Intensive Group for Kansei/Affective Engineering International Conference on Kansei Engineering & Intelligent Systems KEIS

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