Kansei Engineering: Kansei/Affective Engineering (Industrial Innovation)

KANSEI/AFFECTIVE

ENGINEERING

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Industrial Innovation Series

Series Editor

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Department of Systems and Engineering Management

Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) – Dayton, Ohio

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Computational Economic Analysis for Engineering and Industry

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Conveyors: Applications, Selection, and Integration

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Global Engineering: Design, Decision Making, and Communication

Carlos Acosta, V. Jorge Leon, Charles Conrad, and Cesar O. Malave

Handbook of Industrial Engineering Equations, Formulas, and Calculations

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Handbook of Industrial and Systems Engineering

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Handbook of Military Industrial Engineering

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Inventory Management: Non-Classical Views

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Kansei Engineering - 2 volume set

• Innovations of Kansei Engineering

Mitsuo Nagamachi & Anitawati Mohd Lokman

• Kansei/Affective Engineering

Mitsuo Nagamachi

Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data

Auroop R. Ganguly, João Gama, Olufemi A. Omitaomu, Mohamed Medhat Gaber,

and Ranga Raju Vatsavai

Moving from Project Management to Project Leadership: A Practical Guide

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Social Responsibility: Failure Mode Effects and Analysis

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STEP Project Management: Guide for Science, Technology, and Engineering Projects

Adedeji B. Badiru

Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems

John Turner Boardman & Brian J. Sauser

Techonomics: The Theory of Industrial Evolution

H. Lee Martin

Triple C Model of Project Management: Communication, Cooperation, Coordination

Adedeji B. Badiru

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Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

Pamela McCauley-Bush & Lesia L. Crumpton-Young

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Industrial Control Systems: Mathematical and Statistical Models and Techniques

Adedeji B. Badiru, Oye Ibidapo-Obe, & Babatunde J. Ayeni

Learning Curves: Theory, Models, and Applications

Mohamad Y. Jaber

Modern Construction: Productive and Lean Practices

Lincoln Harding Forbes

Project Management: Systems, Principles, and Applications

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Statistical Techniques for Project Control

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© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

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Edited by

MITSUO NAGAMACHI

KANSEI/AFFECTIVE

ENGINEERING

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nagamachi, Mitsuo, 1936-

Kansei/affective engineering / editor, Mitsuo Nagamachi.

p. cm. -- (Industrial innovation series ; Kansei engineering.)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4398-2133-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Design--Human factors. 2. Human engineering. 3. System design--Psychological

aspects. I. Title. II. Series.

TS170.N34 2011

658.5’75--dc22 2010030403

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© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

vii

Contents

Preface......................................................................................................................ix

About the Editor.....................................................................................................xi

Contributors......................................................................................................... xiii

1. Kansei/Affective Engineering and History of Kansei/Affective

Engineering in the World .............................................................................1

Mitsuo Nagamachi

2. Methods of Kansei/Affective Engineering and Specific Cases of

Kansei Products ............................................................................................ 13

Mitsuo Nagamachi

3. Psychological Methods of Kansei Engineering ..................................... 31

Shigekazu Ishihara

4. Psychophysiological Methods....................................................................39

Keiko Ishihara

5. Statistical Analysis for Kansei/Affective Engineering ........................ 51

Mitsuo Nagamachi

6. Soft Computing System for Kansei/Affective Engineering.............. 143

Yukihiro Matsubara

7. Rough Set Theory and Kansei/Affective Engineering....................... 207

Tatsuo Nishino

8. Kansei/Affective Engineering and Web Design..................................227

Anitawati Mohd Lokman

9. Kansei/Affective Engineering for the European Fast-Moving

Consumer Goods Industry .......................................................................253

Cathy Barnes, Tom Childs, and Stephen Lillford

10. Kansei/Affective Engineering Applied to Triggers in Powered

Hand Tools ................................................................................................... 275

Ebru Ayas, Jörgen Eklund, and Shigekazu Ishihara

11. Kansei, Quality, and Quality Function Deployment.......................... 295

Ricardo Hirata Okamoto

Index ..................................................................................................................... 311

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

ix

Preface

The research of Kansei/affective engineering started in 1970 at Hiroshima

University, and since then, more than 40 new Kansei products have been

developed in Japan and worldwide. Those new Kansei products have

been utilized in daily life. Today, Kansei/affective engineering has spread

throughout the world. Many universities are teaching Kansei/affective engi￾neering, and industries are using Kansei/affective engineering in innovative

product development.

After coming back to Hiroshima from the University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor, I worked as an ergonomist in vehicle design. I then worked as a con￾sultant for Japanese automotive, steel plant, ship building, and many other

companies as a manufacturing and quality control engineer. I noticed these

companies had not produced products on the basis of the customer-oriented

view. My thinking had been in human-oriented manufacturing, quality con￾trol, and management. People know me as the founder of the cell produc￾tion system in Japan, in which only one worker assembles whole parts for

a vehicle.

The Japanese term kansei means wants, needs, affect, emotion, and so

forth. The concern of Kansei is the feeling that people have in their minds.

If a customer feels a bit hungry he selects a restaurant that can serve a small

meal. But if he wants a splendid dinner, he visits a high-class restaurant.

In selecting a passenger car, the customer follows her wants, feelings, and

motivation, while thinking of the price of the cars. Today all customers wish

to purchase a product that matches their feeling (Kansei). In these recent

decades of very severe economics in the world, the company that will sur￾vive is the one able to determine such a sense about customer wants, needs,

and emotions—namely, Kansei.

Kansei/affective engineering has contributed to developing a lot of new

Kansei products. For example, Sharp’s new refrigerator, Sharp’s Liquid Crystal

Viewcam, Mazda’s MX-5 sports car, Wacoal’s Good-Up Bra, Komatsu’s Ellesse

(a shovel car), Milbon’s Deesse’s (a shampoo and treatment), BT’s Lift car

(Sweden), Panasonic Electric Works’ Twin lamp (eco-lamp), and Rakmatair

(a new mattress that prevents pressure sores), and many other products have

been developed using Kansei/affective engineering. We have conducted

research on the soft computing Kansei system, the computerized Kansei sys￾tem for making an intelligent and virtual design based on the databases of

customer emotion. We constructed the artificial Kansei system and neural

network Kansei system, which supported the construction of design based

on customer emotion. Kansei/affective engineering helps enhance workers’

job satisfaction by considering their emotions. Kansei/affective engineering

is an excellent technology that helps develop splendid and emotion-based

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

x Preface

products that match customer desire. As the new product is fit to the cus￾tomers’ feelings, the company makes a big profit from product sales.

We have aimed to promote this innovative technology worldwide for any￾one to learn and apply to any kind of industry to develop new emotion￾based products. First, the Kansei/affective engineer should observe the

customer’s behavior and determine his or her feelings, wants, and needs, or

namely, emotions. Next, the engineer should have knowledge of statistical

methods that can lead to good specifications for new product design. It is

also very important that the engineer learns the human factors or ergonom￾ics discipline, because all kinds of products should be easy for the customer

to operate and use. Every product should be safe to use. The Kansei/affective

engineer should also have a human orientation. All countries are going to

become aging societies; the engineer should focus on the elderly and small

children as well. Kansei/affective engineering needs to have a spirit of inte￾gration with a universal design philosophy.

This book is the product of the Nagamachi group of Kansei/affective

engineers. Professors Tatsuo Nishino, Shigekazu Ishihara, Keiko Ishihara,

Yokihiro Matsubara, Toshio Tsuchiya, Dr. Anitawati Mohd Lokman, and

Dr. Ricardo Hirata Okamoto were my students; they have supported my

Kansei/affective engineering research for a long time. Tom Childs and Jörgen

Eklund have kindly collaborated for this book, contributing their Kansei/

affective engineering research. I am very grateful for their efforts.

Finally, I would say that Kansei/affective engineering aims to realize three

wins: Win for the customers in providing emotion-based products, Win for

workers for satisfaction with their work, and Win for the company in achiev￾ing great profits from the Kansei products.

Mitsuo Nagamachi, Ph.D., CPE

Professor Emeritus, Hiroshima University

Professor Emeritus, Hiroshima International University

Professor Emeritus, Kure National Institute of Technology

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

xi

About the Editor

Mitsuo Nagamachi, Ph.D., is the founder of Kansei engineering/Kansei

ergonomics, an ergonomic new product development technology known

and implemented worldwide. As a professor at Hiroshima University,

Dr. Nagamachi created more than 40 new Kansei products, including

cars, construction machinery, home appliances, brassieres, cosmetic prod￾ucts, handrails, toilets, and even a bridge over a river.

Dr. Nagamachi received his Ph.D. in mathematical psychology from

Hiroshima University in 1963. He then studied medicine and engineering.

From 1967 to 1968 he was a guest scientist at the Transportation Research

Institute of the University of Michigan. Upon his return, he became the

youngest ergonomic researcher appointed to Japan’s Automotive Research

Committee, whose mission was to make the Japanese automotive industry

a world player. Dr. Nagamachi has consulted with the Japanese automotive

industry on manufacturing, quality control, vehicle safety, management

robotics, and Kaizen. In the 1970s, he began his research on Kansei engi￾neering, which translates consumer’s psychological feelings about a product

into perceptual design elements. This technique resulted in the creation of

numerous phenomenally successful products, including the MX-5 for Mazda,

the Liquid Crystal Viewcam for Sharp, and the Good Up Bra for Wacoal.

Dr. Nagamachi has traveled extensively to teach Kansei engineering. He

had served as a consultant in England, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Mexico,

Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia. In 2008 he was awarded the Japan Government

Prize for the founding of Kansei engineering. He has received many aca￾demic awards from the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering. He has pub￾lished 89 books and 200 articles.

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

xiii

Contributors

Ebru Ayas

Department of Ergonomics

Royal Institute of Technology

Cathy Barnes

Faraday

Tom Childs

Professor Emeritus

Manufacturing Engineering

University of Leeds

United Kingdom

Jörgen Eklund

Department of Ergonomics

Royal Institute of Technology

Keiko Ishihara

Department of Communication

Hiroshima International University

Japan

Shigekazu Ishihara

Department of Kansei Design

Hiroshima International University

Japan

Stephen Lillford

Design Perspectives

United Kingdom

Anitawati Mohd Lokman

Faculty of Computer and

Mathematical Sciences

Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

Malaysia

Yukihiro Matsubara

Faculty of Information Sciences

Hiroshima City University

Japan

Tatsuo Nishino

Department of Kansei Design

Hiroshima International University

Japan

Ricardo Hirata Okamoto

Keisen Consultores

Mexico

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

1

1

Kansei/Affective Engineering

and History of Kansei/Affective

Engineering in the World

Mitsuo Nagamachi

1.1 What Is Kansei?

Imagine a scenario where you are searching for a restaurant during lunch￾time. You are very hungry and find a restaurant you are not familiar with.

When you enter, you first meet a waitress. She welcomes you and guides you

to a table. You order a dish, and while you wait you look around the room.

Then, you smell the aroma and are pleasantly surprised at the sight of the

exquisite cuisine the server places on your table. The taste is beyond your

expectations. Your impression of the restaurant escalates and makes you

feel splendid.

When you first entered the restaurant and met the waitress, you felt

some abstract feeling. When you looked around the interior, you had a good

sense about the place. You felt pleased with the restaurant. Then, the cui￾Contents

1.1 What Is Kansei?..............................................................................................1

1.2 What Is Kansei/Affective Engineering?.....................................................3

1.3 Routes to Reach a New Kansei Product .....................................................3

1.3.1 Psychological Phase of the Kansei ..................................................3

1.3.2 Psychophysiological Phase of the Kansei.......................................4

1.3.3 Routes to Reach the Kansei ..............................................................4

1.4 What Is Designing Based on Kansei/Affective Engineering? ................5

1.5 History of Kansei/Affective Engineering ..................................................8

1.5.1 History of the New Products Developed Using Kansei/

Affective Engineering .......................................................................8

1.5.2 History of Kansei /Affective Engineering Research.................. 11

References...............................................................................................................12

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

2 Kansei/Affective Engineering

sine was great. These feelings are all Kansei. Kansei is a Japanese word that

expresses the feelings gathered through sight, hearing, smell, and taste. In

our scenario, finally you think of this restaurant as splendid and someday

you want to take your family there. This is also Kansei.

Imagine now another scenario where a woman goes shopping but has no

specific thing to buy. She walks around in a department store and finds a

medium-sized handbag at a low price. She is fascinated with it, especially

with its color. This fascination is also a kind of Kansei.

Kansei is a Japanese term with a broad interpretation, including

1. Sense, sensitivity, sensitiveness, sensibility

2. Feeling, image, affection, emotion, want, need

Consider a man who has keen senses when he notices the events around

him. In this case, we say he has good Kansei. Also, if a man is able to relate to

children and animals, we say he has the Kansei (the sense). When a manager

teaches his subordinates, he says you should have Kansei about customers,

which means that customer service personnel should try to understand cus￾tomers’ feelings. The term Kansei has such wide meanings, and in this book

we have used the term as it is because there is no accurate translation in

other languages, particularly in English.

The Kansei of Kansei/affective engineering applies mainly to the

customers’ feeling. If research and development (R&D) people are ori￾ented to the customers’ wants and needs, the team will be successful

in developing a good product, and the customer service people can ful￾fill the customers’ expectation. The service is also one of products, namely

the service product. There are two different streams in product develop￾ment, which are called product out and market in. The former implies a

philosophy of product development based on technology developed in a

company or based on the company strategy, without attention to custom￾ers’ wants and needs. Many inventions have emerged from this approach.

Another approach to product development is to focus on customer wants

and needs. Nowadays people have many goods at home, and it is not

easy to stimulate their purchasing behavior. But customer-oriented prod￾uct development will be successful in selling a new product because the

market-in philosophy leads to the development of a product that fits cus￾tomers’ feelings and emotions. This is why Kansei-oriented development

is needed in R&D activities.

On the other hand, Kansei/affective engineering is oriented to human

minds. This is why it is called human-oriented product development. The first

target of Kansei/affective engineering is to grasp human Kansei, and then if

new technology is needed, Kansei engineering will seek the new technology

development in order to realize the Kansei product.

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Kansei/Affective Engineering 3

1.2 What Is Kansei/Affective Engineering?

Kansei engineering is a kind of technology that translates the customer’s

feeling into design specifications (Nagamachi and Lokman 2010). The R&D

team grasps the customer’s feeling, namely the Kansei; analyzes the Kansei

data using psychological, ergonomic, medical, or engineering methods; and

designs the new product based on the analyzed information. Kansei/affective

engineering is a technological and engineering process from Kansei data

to design specifications.

People’s lives are diverse, but fundamentally all people seek pleasant and

emotional satisfaction in quality of life (QOL). It is becoming important to

determine the satisfaction people have in mind that will enhance their QOL.

On the other hand, people are very aware of the ecosystem. Air, water, and

temperature are becoming more integral parts of people’s lives. In addition,

most countries are becoming older societies, and the welfare field is another

new issue to address. This multifaceted consciousness is also included in

Kansei. These issues should be considered during product development as a

Kansei ecosystem.

The process of Kansei/affective engineering should include the follow￾ing scheme: First, a Kansei engineer should think, Who are the customers?

Second, What do they want and need?; that is, what is their Kansei? Third,

the Kansei engineer should consider how to evaluate the customers’ Kansei.

After the Kansei evaluation, the engineer should analyze the Kansei data

using statistical analysis or psychophysiological measurement, and then

transfer the analyzed data to the design domain.

1.3 Routes to Reach a New Kansei Product

1.3.1 Psychological Phase of the Kansei

The Kansei is an outcome through cognition and the five senses: sight, hear￾ing, taste, smell, and touch. The inner sense is related to gravity, and it is

useful to test the feeling as in when speeding up or slowing down a vehicle.

Accordingly, to be more precise, we have six senses. There is the cognition

function, which is concerned with memory, judgment, interpretation, and

thinking. The Kansei comes out through cognition after some work by the

senses. In our earlier story of a new restaurant, a customer meets a wait￾ress and hears her voice. The cuisine is served, and the customer smells and

tastes the food as he eats. These are sensations, and the customer feels that

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

4 Kansei/Affective Engineering

the restaurant is friendly and warm. These are Kansei that emerged through

cognition with sensation activities.

When you want to make a new, good Kansei product, you should first

think what Kansei are related to the new product and how to obtain the

customer’s Kansei. In a restaurant business, the owner should think of what

factors stimulate a customer to develop his/her feelings and motivation. Are

these due to friendly service, or the decor of the room, or a good cook’s cui￾sine? Of course, price is also a concern.

1.3.2 Psychophysiological Phase of the Kansei

The friendly voice is related to the physiological mechanism of the ear,

and perceiving a good taste is a physiological function of the tongue. Hard

work forces workers to exhaust their energy and makes them tired. Brain

waves (EEG) are stimulated when working with high motivation, but idle

and repetitive work increases the worker’s feeling of boredom. When using

a very soft mattress, people could feel uncomfortable if they have high body

pressure. These are examples of a kind of Kansei known as psychophysi￾ological Kansei.

1.3.3 Routes to Reach the Kansei

The customer’s Kansei has a diversity of expressions, from psychological to

psychophysiological measurement, and each measure also has a variety of

emergence, as shown in Figure 1.1. The Kansei engineer who wants to make

a new Kansei product should first choose the most appropriate route to reach

the correct customer Kansei, by the use of EEG, EMG, attitudes, or words.

Kansei

EEG

EMG

HR

Kansei survey

Data analysis

Data

interpretation

New product

design

Words

Eye

movement

Face

expression

Attitude

behavior

Figure 1.1

Choices of route to reach the Kansei.

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Kansei/Affective Engineering 5

This choice is important. If you choose the right route, you will be successful

in achieving a Kansei product design. But if you cannot choose a route that

reaches the correct Kansei, you cannot successfully perform Kansei engi￾neering. The Kansei engineer should first observe the customer’s behavior

and check which route will best reach the customer’s Kansei. The successful

route is not always a single one. It can be a combination of several routes.

1.4 What Is Designing Based on Kansei/Affective Engineering?

Kansei/affective engineering is defined as the technology of translating the

consumer’s Kansei into the product design domain (Nagamachi 1995, 1999,

2005, 2010). The process of performing Kansei/affective engineering is shown

in Figure 1.1:

1. Grasp the consumer’s Kansei in the specific product domain (passen￾ger car, cosmetic, shaver, etc.) using psychological or psychophysi￾ological measurements.

2. Analyze the Kansei data by statistical, medical, or engineering meth￾ods in order to clarify the Kansei structure.

3. Interpret the analyzed data and transfer the data to the new product

domain.

4. Finally, design a new Kansei product.

Following this Kansei/affective engineering process ensures you will get to

the fourth stage automatically, but this does not always produce successful

product development. Statistical analysis can make clear the Kansei structure,

but this does not go beyond the existing data level. To reach inventive and

innovative product development requires a Kansei engineer and a product

designer to collaborate and milk their idea for producing an excellent Kansei

product using the Kansei data. The process is illustrated in Figure 1.2.

As described in the next paragraphs, we have developed a variety of

Kansei/affective methods, from category classification to an artificial intel￾ligence system. We describe here two very simple examples of Kansei prod￾uct development, which can be applied by anyone to develop a Kansei

product easily. In any case, Kansei product development must focus on

customer-oriented or human-oriented aspects.

The Sharp Company introduced Kansei/affective engineering into its

design group and used it to develop a new refrigerator in 1978. The project

team, supported by this author, visited monitors’ houses with a camcorder

in order to observe how they use a refrigerator. The team set up the cam￾corder in front of the refrigerator and took pictures of a woman operating it.

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC