Kansei Engineering: Affective and Emotional Design

Design to satisfy people's subjective, emotional, aesthetic preferences is already recognised as important in many consumer industry sectors, where competing products are hard to differentiate on functional or usable grounds. In consumer-oriented design, satisfying the consumers' aspiration is a fundamental design target. In order to better understand the consumer's true desires and to avoid misunderstanding or missing completely their personal preferences, it essential to develop methods to capture the consumers' cognition models for product. People choose to buy products that in some subjective, perhaps life-style, manner appeal to them. In the last two decades many methodologies have been developed to facilitate the integration of affective aspects, such as emotions and consumer perceptions, into product design in order to fulfil the requirements of customers. Affective science and engineering, known in Japan as Kansei engineering is one of these methodologies. This method utilises a multidisciplinary approach, employing tools from several fields such as social sciences, psychology, physiology and statistics. Kansei engineering is a systematic approach to product design uses physiological measurements of sensory qualities associated with emotions that are pleasing to human beings, such as comfort and beauty. It has been shown that, Kansei engineering is the most recent ergonomics technology of consumer-oriented product development which has been received considerable attention in many research programs and especially in Japan. The aim of this paper is to understand the basic concepts, methods and tools of the Kansei engineering, and apply Kansei engineering methodology into an industrial product development process. Kansei engineering, by providing a window into the heart and mind of the consumer, may be the key to designing and producing a new class of products. In conclusion, Kansei engineering is a concept and methodology in strong development, a framework in which tools and methods are continuously developed, added and integrated. This paper suggests that Kansei engineering approach should be more involved in the field of design.