What is Kansei engineering?

Kansei is a Japanese term which means psychological feeling or image of a product. Kansei engineering refers to the translation of consumers' psychological feeling about a product into perceptual design elements. Kansei engineering is also sometimes referred to as "sensory engineering" or "emotional usability." This technique involves determining which sensory attributes elicit particular subjective responses from people, and then designing a product using the attributes which elicit the desired responses.

In order to perform Kansei engineering, you have to start with a set of products sufficiently diverse to provoke a wide range of different emotional responses. These subjective responses can be assessed using sets of bipolar attribute rating scales. A typical bipolar attribute rating scale uses a pair of opposed terms, such as simple vs. complex or enticing vs. repulsive, placed on a continuum represented as a line. Participants are asked to place a mark on that line to indicate where they think a product falls relative to the two attributes in question.

Each product is rated on each attribute scale, and these ratings are statistically compared to provide a distribution of products across the different rating criteria. Analyzing all products rated highly on a particular characteristic allows you to draw conclusions about which perceptual elements are responsible for eliciting this subjective judgment.

What can I apply it to?

Any product that is intended to communicate a specific user experience by means of visual, auditory, or tactile features. For best effect, Kansei engineering must be applied at a point in the development cycle where sufficient flexibility exists to make decisions concerning the visual, auditory or tactile format of the product. Kansei engineering has been applied with great success in the automotive industry (the Mazda Miata being a notable example) and is being extended to other product domains including consumer products and software systems.

How much does it cost?

Because the labor involved in Kansei engineering studies can vary so greatly depending upon the product and the attributes of interest, we can't give a typical cost or turn-around time for such a study. For a customized proposal and quote, please contact us.

What do I get?

A final report that details our findings and provides a synopsis of the relationship between the physical properties studied and the subjective responses they evoked.

Where does it fit into the design process?

In the middle, after the information architecture has been defined, and before the user interface specification has been written. Findings from Kansei engineering will impact visual appearance attributes and, in some cases, interaction techniques.