Applied Ergonomics 33 (2002) 289294

Technical note

Kansei engineering as a powerful consumer-oriented technology

for product development
Mitsuo Nagamachi*
Department of Kansei Ergonomics, Hiroshima International University, Kurosecho, Hiroshima 724-0695, Japan

Abstract
Kansei engineering was founded 30 years ago, as an ergonomics and consumer-oriented technology for producing a new product.
When a consumer wants to buy something, he/she will have a kind of feeling and image (kansei in Japanese) in his/her mind. If the
consumers feeling could be implemented in the new product, he/she would be more satised with the product. Kansei engineering
aims at translation of kansei into the product design eld including product mechanical function. This is why it is called the
consumer-oriented aspect. There are many products in Japan which have applied kansei engineering. Recently, it has also been
applied to construction products as well as to community design. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Kansei; Consumer-oriented technology; Computer-assisted system; Product design

1. Introduction
The trend of product development is changing
towards the consumer-oriented; namely the consumers
feeling and needs are recognized as invaluable in
product development for manufacturers. Kansei engineering or kansei ergonomics was founded at Hiroshima
University about 30 years ago (Nagamachi, 1989, 1991,
1995a, b, 1999). It aims at the implementation of the
customers feeling and demands into product function
and design. When a customer wants to purchase
something, for instance, to buy a car, TV set or clothing,
he/she will have a kind of feeling such as graceful and
looks intelligent, but not so expensivey. This feeling is
called kansei in Japanese. The kansei means the
customers psychological feeling as well as embracing
physiological issues. For instance, if the development
target of a manufacturer is a sophisticated room airconditioner which is able to control room temperature
automatically to be comfortable for person(s) working
in the room, the mechanical function of the airconditioner should be developed based on the psychological and physiological criteria.
Kansei engineering/kansei ergonomics is dened as
translating the customers kansei into the product
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-823-70-4849; fax: +81-823-704852.
E-mail address: m-nagama@he.hirokoku-u.ac.jp (M. Nagamachi).

design domain. If the users target is a passenger car,

all kansei concerning the exterior, interior, engine, etc.
are implemented in those designs. In this case, the
surveyed kansei are transferred to physical traits rst,
and these are transformed to the design. If it is
urban planning, and if the people in the community
want to design in terms of kansei ergonomics, the
kansei included are the districts culture and history
which should be implemented in the urban redesign
(Nagamachi, 1995b).

2. Organizations introducing the kansei engineering

The list of organizations which have introduced
kansei engineering/ergonomics so far include:
(1) Automotive industry: Mitsubishi, Mazda, Toyota,
Honda, Ford, Hyundai, Delphi Automotive Systems.
(2) Construction machine industry: Komatsu.
(3) Electric home appliance industry: Sharp, Sanyo,
Matsushita, Matsushita Electric Works, LG, Samsong.
(4) Ofce machine industry: Fuji Xerox, Cannon, Fuji
Film.
(5) House construction industry: Matsushita Electric
Works, YKK Design, Tateyama Aluminum, Kansai Electric Power Plant.

0003-6870/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 0 3 - 6 8 7 0 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 1 9 - 4

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(6) Costume industry: Wacoal, Goldwin.

(7) Cosmetic industry: Shiseido, Noevia, Milbon,
Ogawa Fragrances.
(8) Others: KDS, Pilot.

3. Methods of kansei engineering

Mazda used a method of category classication to
develop a sports car, Miata. We started from the survey
of customers driving behavior, especially young drivers
maneuvering and attitudes, because Mazda decided to
develop a new car for young people and conducted a
questionnaire survey about life style and valued
customers behavior. From analysis of these data, we
put down keywords on cards one by one and found the
zero-level concept of the new product at the starting
point. The product development begins from the zerolevel concept (see Fig. 1). The concept is broken down to
subconcepts, to be ner and more understandable in the
second stage. We break down the concepts to the
subconcepts continuously, and at some time reach the
appropriate physical feature t to the subconcept. This
gives a rough set of characteristics of the subconcept and
then we conduct the ergonomics experiments to settle
more detailed specications regarding the product
design (Nagamachi, 1995b).
In Mazda, the project team found unication of
driver-machine as the zero-level concept t to the new
type of sports car and from breaking down concept they
got the physical domain. After many ergonomics
experiments, they reached the nal design specications.
In Milbon, the concurrent engineering team carried
out a multivariate analysis of hair care complaints and
decided the zero-level concept of the new product. The
concept was broken down to the subconcepts and then
these were transformed to chemical materials.
The kansei engineering system implies a computerassisted system of kansei engineering, an expert system
and databases. The kansei words are input in the system
and these words are recognized in reference to the kansei
word database. The words are matched to the image
database and calculated by an inference engine to nd

Kansei
Zero

1st
Tight feeling

HMU

Direct feeling
Speedy feeling
Communication

2nd

nth

Physical
trails

Ergonomic
experiment

Size
Width
Height
Seat
Steering
design
Shift lever
Speed meter
Frequency
Open style

Tight feeling
Chassis design
experiment
Sheet design
Interior kansei
Interior design
experiment
Power train
Steering
development
Steering yaw ratio
function
Shift lever
Steering design
length
Shift lever design
Minus gravity
Speed meter design
Noise frequency exhaust pipe design
analysis

the best-t design, which will be shown on the display of

the computer. This system is very useful for the
customer to select the product most tted to his /her
kansei, and for a designer to make sense of the new
product suggested by the system (Fig. 2).
The kansei engineering system described already
means a ow from the kansei to design domain and
this is called forward kansei engineering (forward
KE). The hybrid kansei engineering (hybrid KE)
system holds a backward ow from design to kansei
assessment. The designer watches a candidate produced
by forward KE and inputs the new idea suggested by the
candidate into the system in a kind of sketch. Then the
system recognizes the sketch by the kansei feature
recognition system, a kind of intelligent system, and the
sketch is transferred to the assessment area to assess the
sketch with the kansei word(s). Hybrid KE has forward
and backward kansei subsystems (Fig. 3).
Nissan utilized a hybrid KE system to design a new
steering wheel for a passenger car, shown in Fig. 4. At
the rst stage, a designer used the forward engineering
system to nd a candidate steering wheel t to his kansei
of a new steering wheel. Secondly, he got a new idea of
the steering wheel with reference to the candidate and
sketched a new one. The computer system understood
his idea of the new steering wheel and it scored his idea
on the basis of the database. The outcome of the system
concerning the steering wheel is illustrated in Fig. 4. In
the hybrid KE system, the feature recognition system
takes a distorted circle, but the intelligent system is able
to understand any circle.
The kansei mathematical model is a system with
mathematical structure which is able to deal with the

Fig. 2. Miata made by Mazda.

Automotive
engineering

Fig. 1. Kansei engineering ow from the zero-level.

Kansei
Hybrid
Kansei
Assessment

KES

Design
Element
Designers
Sketch

Fig. 3. A schema of hybrid kansei engineering system.

M. Nagamachi / Applied Ergonomics 33 (2002) 289294

291

Kansei Engineering
USER

Virtual space

User interface

Sensor
Sensor

Control division

Draw
Draw

Virtual space
control
control

Inference engine

Object
Object
addition
addition

Knowledge-base

Object
Object
production
production

Fig. 4. A steering wheel developed by the hybrid KES.

kansei and to predict phenomena according to kansei

assumptions. Sanyo desired to make a unique sophisticated color copy machine and attempted to utilize
kansei engineering. The project team evaluated the
attributes of beautiful and healthy faces using
semantic differential scales, and discovered that a
limited set of hue, brightness and saturation of a limited
area were able to predict peoples reactions to a
beautiful copy. The hue, brightness and saturation
were expressed by fuzzy logic and the team constructed
a fuzzy model, which was implemented as an intelligent
color copy machine, a unique kansei engineering activity
(Fukushima et al., 1995).

4. Virtual kansei engineering (VIKE)

Virtual reality technology is an advanced computer
technology, able to construct a virtual space in the
computer, and we can have such a virtual experience
such as we cannot have in the real world (Wilson, 1999).
VIKE implies that we build a kansei space t to a
customers kansei and that he/she can have the virtual
experience in the kansei space in order to examine the
appropriateness of a design for his /her kansei (Matsubara and Nagamachi, 1997).
Since we can check the kansei space before production
of a kansei product, the combined technology is very
useful and effective for house design, vehicle interior
design, urban design, and landscape design like river,
bridge and dam construction.
Matsushita Electric Works and Hiroshima University
attempted jointly to apply VIKE for kitchen and dining
room design. As shown in Fig. 5, the system on the left
side is the kansei engineering system and on the right
side the virtual system. At rst, a customer answers the
lifestyle questions on the display and inputs their height
and the kansei words that they want to be designed. The
kitchen database is based on 10,000 womens feelings
and the kitchen designs imaged by these people. The
kansei engineering system proposes a candidate, calcu-

Face
sheet

Life
style

Kansei

Texture

Shape

Fig. 5. The system structure of the VIKE: the left side means the
kansei engineering, and the right side the virtual reality system.

lated by the system t to the users kansei. If the graphic

design displayed on the screen is satisfactory, the
procedure moves to the virtual space processed by the
virtual system. If the customer wants to change a part of
the display, the design can be changed by the change
module system. Then, the customer is able to touch the
parts of the virtual kitchen, for instance turn the knob of
a water facility or open the cupboard door and so on. If
the customer is satised in the virtual space, the blueprint of the kitchen design decided through the VIKE
system will be transferred to the factory. All parts of the
kitchen will be delivered to the customers house within
2 weeks and the new kitchen will be constructed in front
of the customer. This system is very popular in Tokyo,
Nagoya, Osaka and Hiroshima.
The VIKE computerized system was extended to
whole house design, called HousMall. The VIKE
deals with only kitchen and dining room design, but the
HousMall is able to treat the exterior of the house, the
entrance, Japanese and western style rooms, kitchen and
dining room, bathroom, parent/children rooms. The
system structure is shown in Fig. 6. It has three blocks of
computerized subsystems, the main control, the kansei
engineering system (the left side of the gure) and the
virtual reality system (the right side of the gure). The
HousMall system consists of the main control system
with interface to the user, the kansei and image
database, the inference engine with knowledge base,
the virtual reality system and nally the design
construction system. The databases consist of 10,000
womens opinions and interior designers evaluation of
houses (Nagamachi and Nishino, 1999).
A customer who wants to build his/her own house
rst inputs family data and lifestyle data in the
HousMall system. The system asks them which part
they want to start, from the exterior to children room

M. Nagamachi / Applied Ergonomics 33 (2002) 289294

292

Client System

OUTPUT

INPUT

Main System
User1-Designer

User Interface

User2-Designer

Web Browser

Web Browser

System Controller

3DCG Software

3DCG Software

User data
processor

Data
Data
changer
changer

Item
decision

Estimator

Server System
Housedesign
design
House
system
system

Expert
DB

Inference
engine

Web Server

Entrance

Life
style

Room

Kitchen

Visualizer

Knowledge-base

Face
sheet

Internet User
Communication

Kansei

Kansei Engineering

Virtual world
editor

Virtual
operator

Shape
editor

Simulator

Texture
editor

Data Gathering

System Controller

Neural Network
based Analyzer

Inference Engine

Kansei
Rule Base

3D Design and
Color Database

Fig. 7. Collaborative kansei designing system.

DB

DB
Virtual World System

Fig. 6. The system structure of the HousMall.

design. Suppose they want to start from the house

exterior design, then they are asked to input their kansei
as the house exterior. They input their kansei words in
the system. The system proposes a candidate house
exterior design t to the kansei as a result of the system
calculation. If they like the candidate, they move to the
virtual space of the house and can look at it from any
angle. If there are some problems that they do not like,
they can change them using the change system. They
touch everything in the virtual space and, if they like the
virtual candidate, the system ends. Then, they will have
consultation with an architect to decide the exterior in
detail. This system has been open in business in Osaka
since 1999.

They start talks with each other about rough specications and begin the design. Afterwards, when needed
they refer to the kansei system and the kansei data bases.
Sometime they watch others collaborate in the work of
designing and talk to each other concerning their
feelings and ideas (Ishihara et al., 1998). Fig. 7 illustrates
the system structure of the collaborative kansei designing system. Evaluation has found improvements in
design cycle times and in ratings of the systems
usefulness.
Concurrent engineering is well known in the management of technology, whereby every division participates
in development activities from the beginning of the
project. The advantages of concurrent engineering are
that all functions are able to have the same understanding and can, actively and in timely fashion, play
their roles in the project.

5. Collaborative kansei design system

6. A case of a cosmetic product

We constructed a groupware design system using

the Web, that has an intelligent system and kansei
databases. This system is very useful for joint work of
designing by several designers. The system has a server
with an intelligent software which supports collaborative designing, since the designers can use voice and can
see colleagues work on the display, developing or
correcting designs using the kansei databases and by
following the system suggestions. After receiving the
company order for product development, designers
check the kansei database and the intelligent system.

When a cosmetic manufacturer, Milbon, asked for

kansei engineering for a new product development, we
involved all representatives participating in the new
project, including marketing, product planning, research, design, production, sales and an ergonomist.
After deciding that the focus products are shampoo and
hair treatment for ladies, we conrmed three major
aspects: (1) the bulk transport development, (2) the
container design development, and (3) utilization of
kansei engineering together with salon market research.
This company has been utilizing salon research

M. Nagamachi / Applied Ergonomics 33 (2002) 289294

effectively, which involves a hair designer to support the

product development (Nagamachi, 2000).
We conducted a kansei survey on hair care complaints
in which we asked ladies at salons what trouble they
have about hair care. We obtained hair care complaints
to do with the types of hair length and hair colors. These
data were analyzed by Quantication Theory Type III, a
factor analysis for qualitative data. There was little
difference in hair care complaints with age, especially
between 20s and 30s, and they expected the new
material to make their hair soft and breezy (sara-sara
in Japanese). This was decided as the zero-level product
concept in kansei engineering.
The project team conrmed the new concept of the
product with all relevant personnel and started to break
down this concept into the subconcepts and to write
these on a number of card sheets. The procedure was
continued to produce several phrases and nally three or
four cards were selected as the most important of the
new product characteristics. These cards were dened in
detail from the viewpoint of chemical materials. The
researchers examined these chemical demands in the
laboratory and produced many candidates of chemical
combination which were expected to t to the zero-level
concept.
We surveyed who the best designer was from the
viewpoint of hair designing as well as an understanding
of the kansei of hair, and selected Mr. Saito at the
Melange in Tokyo. He was invited to Milbon in Osaka
as a designer to try to use the test material and to
evaluate it as a professional designer. The test materials
produced in the laboratory in terms of kansei engineering were examined and evaluated by Mr. Saito and
project team members. They evaluated each material on
the kansei scaling sheet. This was continued several
times and the researchers developed the new materials
each time according to the evaluation. Finally, the
project team obtained satisfactory materials for shampoo and hair treatment after several trials.
The kansei engineering procedure was applied also to
the container. Sixty different types of cosmetic containers were collected from different makers, and college
girls evaluated these containers exterior design on a
semantic differential scale with 40 kansei words. The
evaluated data were analyzed by ARTsss which is a kind
of Neural Network model based on the Kofonen model.
The ARTsss model is able to classify the group of
containers according to their design characteristics and
to their kansei (Ishihara et al., 1998). Therefore, we were
able to identify the candidates of containers appropriate
to a soft and sara-sara feeling.
After ARTsss analysis, we calculated these data in
terms of Quantication Theory Type I, which is
applicable for multivariate regression analysis on the
qualied data. From both analyses, we could nd a
good model of the new container for the product

293

Fig. 8. Shampoo and treatment developed by Milbon

concept. This nal decision on the container model was

shown to the designer group, and then they drew the
new container design.
The name of the new cosmetic product was decided by
discussion with all members of the project team. The
concept of the product was soft and sara-sara feeling
and the panel members said that when the people
washed their hair with this new product, they would feel
like the hair waving by wind and as if they would be
a queen. They decided to name the new product as
Deesses, which implies as if Queens. Fig. 8 shows
the new cosmetic product, on the right side Treatment
and the left side Shampoo.

7. Final remarks
We have engaged in the development of many new
products using kansei engineering. The sports car named
Miata made by Mazda has had good sales across the
world. Miata at present is the third generation, but
Mazda conducted only minor changes, because the
original kansei design still works.
The brassiere named Good-Up Bra, made by
Wacoal, was a very good t in the lingerie market. In
this case, 2000 lady participants were the subjects and
they were asked about feelings for wearing brassieres.
The kansei feeling data were analyzed by a multivariate
analysis and Wacoal found the kansei design rules t to
the participants feelings. As a result, the kansei product,
Good-Up Bra, has been a hit on the market.
The new design of TV cameras with rotating lenses
and a liquid crystal display gave a new trend in the TV
camera market, made using kansei engineering. All
products developed by the kansei engineering have had
good sales in the market so far, because it aims to
implement consumers feelings and images (kansei) in
new products and then the customers are willing to buy
them. This is why we say the kansei engineering is

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M. Nagamachi / Applied Ergonomics 33 (2002) 289294

powerful ergonomics as a consumer-oriented technology

in the new age.
The most important point in kansei engineering/
ergonomics is to survey the customers to grasp their
feelings, or kansei, at the beginning of product development. In this rst stage, if the project team thinks
psychophysiological investigation will be needed for the
kansei, the team should start it, and if psychological
measurement of the kansei is needed, it should prepare
the scale of the kansei words consisting of the semantic
differential appropriate adjectives. When both investigations are needed, we use psychophysiological measurement and psychological survey as well.
For instance, the project team of Mazda investigated
the exhaust sound through the engine to nd young
drivers preference for noise in terms of sound frequency
analysis, and the team achieved the nal decision of a
vent pipe design. The young drivers like the sound made
through the pipe. Wacoal worried about the pressure of
brassiere piano wire and the team researched the strong
and soft wire to keep the round shape of the brassiere,
and nally found that very thin amorphous ber would
be the best for that function. If the sensing of the
customers kansei is anticipated accurately, the product
development will be successful. Otherwise, the new
product will be very difcult to t to the market, even if
kansei engineering is utilized.

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