Integrating the Kano model into a robust design approach to enhance customer satisfaction with product design

Abstract

The aesthetic qualities of products are critical factors in achieving higher customer satisfaction. This study presents a robust design approach incorporating the Kano model to obtain the optimal combination of design form elements. This can effectively enhance customer satisfaction and aesthetic product qualities with multiple-criteria characteristics. The Kano model is used to better understand the relationship between performance criteria and customer satisfaction, and to resolve trade-off dilemma in multiple-criteria optimization by identifying the key criteria in customer satisfaction. The robust design approach combines grey relational analysis with the Taguchi method to optimize subjective quality with multiple-criteria characteristics. This simultaneously yields the optimal aesthetic performance and reduces the variations in customer evaluations. Based on Kano model analysis, a weight adjustment process determines the weight of each product criterion for achieving the desired customer satisfaction performance. This process guides the prioritizing of multiple criteria, leading to higher customer satisfaction. A mobile phone design experiment was conducted to verify the benefits of using the proposed integrative approach. Results show that the generated optimal mobile phone design can effectively enhance overall aesthetic performance and customer satisfaction. Although mobile phone designs are the examples of this study, the proposed method may be further used as a universal robust design approach for enhancing customer satisfaction and product quality with multiple-criteria characteristics. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.