Kansei Engineering
I love the look of Jeeps. Note that I didn’t say I love Jeeps. I don’t feel qualified to say that second phrase, as I’ve never owned one and I’ve never driven one. Though, a part of me says that if I do, I might not like them as much. But from a distance of a few feet, Jeeps are so cool. I love the round headlights. I love the look of the rugged grille on the front. I love the exaggerated fenders over the wheels and I love the sharper corners and boxy look. To me, there is something that looks really cool about a box driving over some rough terrain and cutting through the air (because drag doesn’t really matter when you’re only going 15 mph down a canyon road).
On the other hand, the look of PT Cruisers makes me nauseous. I just can’t stand them. They look like they’re whining all the time.
Now you might have the opposite opinion. But regardless, this is an example of Kansei.
As I understand, Kansei is a Japanese word for “human emotion, feeling, impression, sensation, or stimulation.” It’s also often used as a technical term to describe particular approaches in design, engineering, and other technical fields. Kansei engineering can be viewed as a subdomain in which a designer or engineer is exploring the human response and impression to their products. A more general term for this subfield is called “affective engineering” and thus kansei engineering is a particular flavor or method of trying to extract and define the emotional response of a user to the product details and specifications.
Another example of kansei is the “look and feel” of the two competing aircraft designs for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Take a look at the two aircraft in the following picture and notice what catches your eye.
I don’t know if the following is completely true, but I was told that some of the pilots and JSF decision makers expressed distaste towards the apparent “smile” of Boeing’s X-32 aircraft demonstration fighter (the jet fighter on the left). In the pilots’ minds (and also in my mind) a fifth generation jet fighter shouldn’t be smiling during a dog-fight with a Russian Sukhoi Su-57.
It’s likely the JSF program decision makers could have looked past this if indeed all the other technical specifications were superior, but this seems to be at least one downside to the Boeing concept and might have even biased some of the subconscious thoughts among the stakeholders. The “look and feel” of a concept, the kansei, even for trillion dollar programs, could be impactful. Ultimately, Lockheed won the contract.
Not surprisingly, our industrial engineering friends and colleagues often have more experience in kansei and affective engineering compared to traditional mechanical engineers. In a four-year university engineering program, there simply isn’t enough time to learn everything about engineering, including affective engineering. Some university programs will rely on general education classes to expose engineering students to some of the topics addressed in affective or kansei engineering, with courses from psychology, sociology, and the humanities. Unfortunately, this partial education of non-technical content is a trade we tend to accept. We want our engineers to be capable and build bridges that don’t fall down. That comes at a cost of dedicated time and effort in technical knowledge and skills acquisition over many years. However, those same engineers are rarely granted enough time to explore the human connection with their products and design, even if their product is a bridge. There is so much analysis and formulations to sort through that the human element is nearly absent in many engineers’ educational programs. True, the human element is always there, but generally there is a certain sequence of priorities that we follow during the design of a product. As a result, kansei engineering, and the human element, which usually comes later, should perhaps be considered earlier.
The first obvious priority is that the product has to function. If not, the product is dead on arrival. “Functions” are non-negotiable. We simply don’t buy cars that won’t drive. If we need transportation to get to the hospital urgently, we probably don’t care if it is in an ambulance, a car, or even a helicopter. We want the “function of transportation” and hopefully quickly, which comes next.
Thus, this next priority in the sequence is that a given product must function well, be intuitive to users and easily fabricated among other things. This is where performance measures, interface design, manufacturability, and cost estimates start playing a role. It is no longer enough that a function (like transportation) is satisfied, but the function now must be improved, maximized, optimized, and acceptable across a variety of dimensions that stakeholders care about (i.e we need to be transported to the hospital as quickly and as comfortably as possible). But for other activities, the desired transportation might be affordable, efficient, sustainable, and easy to manufacture and repair. These criteria are often interdependent and trades between them must be performed. While one customer wants high acceleration in their vehicle, another customer wants efficiency. Who gets to choose if there can only be one design? But even so, these decisions still don’t quite hit all the human tastes and preferences.
This leads to the next priority, kansei engineering, which is often considered too late in the process, where the emotional and subjective impressions and characteristics start to dominate, and design engineers are trying to identify the impact of product specifications on whether or not a product is considered attractive or desirable by customers. In kansei engineering, it is assumed that customer satisfaction has moved beyond the obvious quantifiable performance metrics and includes subjective, less definable, and potentially erratic human preferences, like choices about color, size, shape, configuration, etc. However, kansei engineering is more than just selecting the right color swatch, it’s understanding and modeling how the color combinations evoke a response within different people or if a particular curve exudes user-friendliness, stability, or value.
I have no reason to despise PT Cruisers based on the first two priorities described above. I’ve never driven one, I don’t even know what they cost, and I don’t know if they’re safe, efficient, comfortable, etc. But what I do know, in terms of kansei, is that PT Cruisers are not desirable based on the way they look (at least to me). They just don’t look like they can go fast, turn well, or carry tall people.
In contrast to the typical priorities above, kansei engineering can take place earlier in the design process and potentially help with the concept generation phases of design. Kansei engineering often starts by identifying the target customer, market, and application area. A designer should always make sure they know the intended audience. It continues by classifying appropriate semantic expressions (i.e. positive or negative exclamations) and words that would be generated from that same market or domain. For example, one does not normally expect the phrase “My phone looks like it has low aerodynamic drag if I drop it” but one might hear “That zipper looks like it might break off if I snag it on the material.” Notice that the zipper might be technically fine, and can empirically withstand the force from a snagged polyester jacket, but that’s not what this user observed. Therefore, certain phrases or words will be expected (or not expected) in the product’s domain. Next, the product’s technical specifications and features are identified and linked to those semantic expressions or words. The connections between actual product features and positive responses can then assist in determining what elements are suggestive of increased attractiveness to the target audience. Various tools can help the engineer explore these interactions and nudge designs into more attractive concepts, which will indubitably have impacts in the technical metrics as well.
Kansei engineering is another of those Japanese principles (like kaizen) that took some time for US companies to adopt, but are now quite popular. It’s become even more important as the tools and expertise in the first two levels have become highly automated with computer technology. Engineers of the future will need to design products that are beautiful on the inside and outside and meet both the objective and subjective measures of effectiveness. They will need to perform and meet all the technical requirements and concurrently know enough about the non-technical to make their products marketable and attractive. Understanding the principles of Kansei engineering, whether we learn about them inside or outside the classroom, will also make us more marketable and attractive to our own supervisors, employers, and customers.
