Unleashing Engineering Creativity: The Kano Model
by Joe Berk
ow do we decide which features to include in new products? That’s a great question. If we miss important features or include unnecessary features, customers will reject our products. If we include unexpected and exciting features, though, we can delight customers and jump ahead of the competition. Dr. Noriaki Kano addressed this key creativity issue by identifying four product attribute areas:
- Threshold Attributes. These are attributes customers expect without knowing it. They will know when they are absent, though, so they must be included.
- Performance Attributes. Performance attributes are minimum known customer requirements. Design teams certainly need to meet these, but their presence is not sufficient for assuring a competitive advantage.
- Unnecessary Attributes. These are features that customers don’t want. They actually work against a purchase decision because they add complexity and cost.
- Excitement Attributes. In the creativity world, this is where success resides. Excitement attributes surprise and delight customers. When customer experience excitement attributes, the impact is immediate and dramatic: They want the product. These attributes differentiate your product from the competition.
The
Kano Model. The model shows customer satisfaction for excitement,
performance, and threshold attributes as a function of how well each is
executed. Excitement attributes offer the greatest customer
satisfaction and clear competitive advantages.The Kano model’s messages are clear:
- Customer dissatisfaction increases sharply when threshold attributes are missing, but when threshold attributes are met, satisfaction doesn’t experience much of an increase. We just don’t get excited when products meet minimum expectations.
- The relationship between customer satisfaction and performance attributes is linear. We get increases in customer satisfaction as we meet performance attributes, but it is not dramatic. Satisfying these expectations is expected, but not exciting.
- Excitement attributes increase customer satisfaction exponentially. We get more bang for our creativity buck as we include well-executed excitement attributes.
- Attributes migrate and have less effect on customer satisfaction over time. This is true for excitement, performance, and threshold attributes, but it is especially true for excitement attributes. What was exciting yesterday is not so exciting tomorrow.
Understanding the different attributes is easier with examples.....
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