DELIGHTING CUSTOMERS THROUGH EMPATHIC DESIGN Andrew Burns Richard Barrett Stephen Evans

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Page 1

Published in the Proceedings of the 6

International Product Development Management Conference,

Churchill College Cambridge, UK, July 5

-6

1999.

DELIGHTING CUSTOMERS THROUGH EMPATHIC DESIGN

Andrew Burns

Richard Barrett

Stephen Evans

Department of Enterprise Integration, Cranfield University, Bedford, England.

a.d.burns@cranfield.ac.uk

steve.evans@cranfield.ac.uk

Catarina Johansson

Lule

University, Department of Human Work Sciences, Lule

, Sweden.

ABSTRACT

This paper describes joint-action research undertaken by Cranfield University, The

Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) and a major European Vehicle

Manufacturer (EVM). The research investigates the applicability of the Kano Model [1]

to the qualities of mature products and the adoption of an Empathic Design approach in

the development of delighter features. The paper describes the design and use of

Empathic Design tools in the development programme of a real vehicle. Conclusions are

drawn from the analysis of 30 focus group attendees, semi-structured interviews and from

the involvement in the initial deployment of the Empathic Design tools. The future

research direction is outlined.

INTRODUCTION

The automotive industry has become increasingly adept at product development and

lead-time reduction through the adoption of a concurrent engineering approach [2]. This

approach demands an increased emphasis on the earliest stages of product development

and recent research, for example the COGENT project [3], has addressed the importance

of technology planning and integration with component suppliers at this stage. The

reduction of development time for a vehicle means that the design focus and specification

has to be set at the very front end of the development process [4]. If the reduction of lead

times and the cost-benefits associated with them are to be maintained vehicle

manufacturers need to get this design focus right first time [2]. Integration of customer

information into these earliest stages of the design process is still limited and its inclusion

is essential to establish the correct early design focus and to ensure the benefits of

adopting a concurrent engineering approach are fully realised. These benefits have been

identified as a reduction in required engineering effort by half and a reduction of

development time by a third [5].

The role of gathering customer information traditionally lies with external market

research firms and internal marketing departments. Experience from EVM and other

manufacturers identifies several limitations of the techniques currently used. Marketing

techniques and customer surveys have limited scope for capturing positive information

from the customer, this is to say that the actions that can be made in response to this

information tend to be corrective rather than delighting. Customers have difficulty

articulating needs and the intangible aspects of products that please them [6]. This has

lead to a distrust of listening to customers too closely since it is believed the information

they can provide is necessarily inaccurate [7]. However the firm that fails to listen to its

customers can end up an adopter rather than an innovator, trailing the market because

they fail to identify winning next generation ideas that delight the customer and

differentiate their products [8].

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Published in the Proceedings of the 6

International Product Development Management Conference,

Churchill College Cambridge, UK, July 5

-6

1999.

Efforts have been made to get around this contradiction in the past. For example the

Lead User approach advocates the identification of fringe customers who are ahead of the

market because they are early adopters of new technologies [9]. However the consumer

has become so advanced that the market place has become an unpredictable and dynamic

phenomenon [10 & 11] suggesting that product developers that assume Lead Users are

predictors of the market are in a risky business.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is currently the industry norm for ensuring a

customer focus in the development process [12]. QFD relies almost wholly on Market

Research data to populate the initial “house” with customer requirements. QFD, although

designed for the task, often fails to translate customer information into design language in

a manner that consistently answers the original customer need [13 & 14]. Furthermore the

organisational barriers that team working and concurrent engineering try to remove are

maintained by the use of specialised marketing departments and external market research

agencies.

Research Problem

The industrial problem described above leads us to our research question.

How can positive customer information be incorporated into a concurrent engineering

approach to product development, so that the product reliably delights the user?

CUPID is an EPSRC funded exploratory research project taking an action research

approach to this. CUPID builds on three years of background research into the

improvement of QFD and positive customer information capture [14 & 15]. The

researchers have chosen an action research approach to gain a full and industrially

grounded understanding of the problem. By actually affecting the design and

development process of real EVM products the industrial collaborator and the multi-

disciplinary university research team work together to define, understand and solve the

industrial problem. The research team is made up of psychologists, industrial designers

and design engineers who use a process of reflective learning, or learning by doing, to

identify the most workable, feasible and implementable solutions, and the new

knowledge that arises.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH

The automobile is an extremely mature product for which there is an excessively

competitive global market and considerable over production [2].

Product Attractiveness

EVM conduct extensive benchmarking and have access to objective industry wide data

to suggest that their vehicles are ahead of their competitors in terms of build quality,

reliability and durability [16]. However the subjective response of the market to their

products, demonstrated by their sales figures and market research, does not reflect this

[17]. The Kano Model of product qualities [1] can help explain this and is a theoretical

lynchpin of this research.

The Kano Model of product qualities

Developed by Prof. Kano, the Kano Model categorises customer needs into three types

of feature [1]. Customers are asked a series of questions that identify the importance of

their needs and the following typology of features can be arrived at.

The customer expects Basic qualities to be in the product and as such high levels of

customer satisfaction are hard to achieve by excelling in these areas. The reliability and

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Published in the Proceedings of the 6

International Product Development Management Conference,

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-6

1999.

durability of a car might be considered Basic qualities. They do not satisfy when present,

but do dissatisfy when absent.

Linear qualities are those for which the level of customer satisfaction increases with the

level of achievement of these qualities. The boot space and fuel consumption of a car

might be considered Linear qualities. The customer becomes satisfied by improvements

in these scalar features but is only excited at extremely high levels of achievement.

Diagram 1 – Kano Model (adapted from [1])

The Delighter feature excites the customer even at low levels of achievement. The

absence of the feature does not dissatisfy the customer since it was not expected.

Delighter features tend to be novel and as such can differentiate a product from its

competitors.

Time influences the categorisation of a feature, and this can be best illustrated with an

example. At the time of its introduction the airbag was a truly novel feature. The

unexpected introduction of the feature delights and excites the customer due to its novelty

and the fact that the customer had not realised this need. As competitor manufacturers

adopt this feature the customer comes to expect this feature but the introduction of further

airbags can still excite her/him. The feature becomes Linear since the more airbags the

greater the level of satisfaction. In the future there may come a point when the feature

becomes Basic such that the presence of an airbag no longer delights the customer but

instead the absence of the feature dissatisfies the customer.

A further variation of the automotive market is that the airbag feature may at the same

point in time after its introduction to the market be a Linear feature in one vehicle

segment but a Basic requirement in a higher segment of vehicle.

One of the research goals is to develop reliable and repeatable methods of capturing

delighters from customer information and to gain access to the unarticulated customer

needs that if answered can delight the customer. The Kano Model suggests that if used

properly a deep understanding of customer needs can increase the perceived quality of

the product by delighting the customer and hence an increase in sales can be expected.

The use of customer information

Delighters

Linear Qualities

Basic

Qualities.

Must have

Customer Delight

Customer

Very

Satisfied

Customer Very

Dissatisfied

Quality Not

Achieved at all

Quality Fully

Achieved

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Published in the Proceedings of the 6

International Product Development Management Conference,

Churchill College Cambridge, UK, July 5

-6

1999.

Currently the industry norm for ensuring that customer requirements are incorporated

into the design of the vehicle is Quality Function Deployment (QFD) [2 & 12]. Previous

research [15, 14, 13 & 18] has highlighted the following limitations of QFD.

Firstly the QFD process requires all product attributes to be accounted for in the

matrices used to translate customer wants into technical hows. For a product as complex

as the car this makes the tool extremely cumbersome and time consuming to implement

in full. Testimony from our collaborators at EVM has confirmed this limitation. The time

involved in completing a QFD implementation on a car can mean that it is done

retrospectively, nullifying its usefulness. EVM report that the tool often fails to

accurately translate the voice of the customer into design specifications resulting in a

product that fulfils the design specification but fails to answer the captured customer

needs.

QFD assigns a large amount of importance to scoring mechanisms that engineers and

designers can consider artificial. The scoring is often done by different teams with no

account taken to the different weightings used, and the expertise therefore lies with the

practitioner rather than within the tool itself.

QFD fails to require separate product teams to work together in the problem solving

tasks, merely acting as a communication tool between them. Abbie Griffin [18] has

identified this limitation as a major cause of failed QFD implementations. In addition she

highlights the need for more detailed information direct from the customer for the

successful use of QFD, something that traditional market research fails to provide. Her

study of the use of QFD in a sample of 9 U.S. manufacturers identified that the QFD

process fails to consistently deliver the development process improvements its Japanese

advocates promote. She particularly highlights the limitations of QFD’s use in the

development of clean sheet, innovative or complex products.

It is true to say that many of the problems outlined above can be explained away by the

poor implementation of QFD and other organisational factors, but the tool’s workings

and huge detail required merely exacerbate these deployment issues.

Research scope

The Kano Model highlights the importance of identifying Delighter features for

customer satisfaction and that one way of discovering these is through an understanding

of unarticulated needs. However the market research literature suggests the large-scale

capture of this information is difficult using existing techniques. Furthermore QFD fails

to reliably translate customer information into product features when the product is

complex or innovative.

This research will explore the use of Empathic Design techniques as a method to assist

in the identification of Kano Delighters and consider evolutions of QFD for incorporating

delighter information in the product development process.

The research will take both a psychological and ethnographic approach to understanding

customer delight, in the refinement of the Kano Model and in the development of tools

that can identify product delighters.

MPATHIC

ESIGN

An understanding of Empathic Design has been built up through extensive review of the

existing literature, and by conducting semi-structured interviews with two renowned

practitioners of the approach, both international Industrial Design consultancies.

At the foundation of Empathic Design is observation [19]. Watching people using

products and services in both their natural environment and context. Empathic design,

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Published in the Proceedings of the 6

International Product Development Management Conference,

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-6

1999.

contrary to gathering data in relative isolation, demands creative interactions throughout

an interdisciplinary team. People are so successful at adapting to their surroundings that

often we fail to notice when people’s behaviour and function is not optimised. Therefore

people themselves, let alone market researchers, are often unaware of their ‘real’ needs

[19].

Observing people using products has merit in highlighting sometimes obvious,

fundamental information but also for identifying opportunities to excite customers

through product design [1]. The Empathic Design literature [1 & 19] suggests several

types of cue that should be looked for whilst doing observational research. These cues

can provide opportunities for new product innovations.

• Frustrations and confusions

• Fears and anxieties

• Wasted time

• Doing things wrong

• Misuse or unexpected usage

• Dangerous situations during use

• Customer sourced modifications of the product

• Fringe customers or extreme users (e.g. disabled users).

• Triggers of use – what circumstances prompt people to use a product or service?

• Interactions with the user’s social and personal environment

• Intangible attributes of the product (peripheral, intangible or emotional)

The crux of the problem lies in the fact that those who know how to innovate do not

come into direct contact with those who need something done. When designers can

explore the customers’ worlds through observation they can simultaneously understand

usage problems and needs, whilst carrying the knowledge of what is possible. The goal of

Empathic Design is to facilitate the design of user focused products by increasing the

degree to which the designers of these products empathise with the customer.

In the diagram below the current market research sourced information given to the

product development team leaves them with a very low level of customer understanding.

This results in only a small overlap between the customer’s usage behaviour and the

designer’s product design behaviour, certainly not large enough to ensure the design of a

product that delights customers.

The adoption of Empathic Design tools on an organisational scale can increase the

design team’s understanding of the customer, represented by an increased overlap in the

customer and designer’s behaviour. If the adoption of these techniques is thorough and

successful throughout the design team then the resulting deep understanding of the

customer should ensure the development of a delightful product.

URRENT

UNDERSTANDING

GAINED FROM

MARKET RESEARCH

ELIGHTERS

-O

’

S AND

’

–

CURRENTLY

MISSUNDERSTOOD OR OUT

OF THE REACH OF THE

PRODUCT DESIGNER

USTOMER

IND

AND

EHAVIOUR

EMPATHISE

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Published in the Proceedings of the 6

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1999.

Diagram 2 – Increasing Designer Empathy

A Proposed Empathic Design Process

The following process is suggested by Lenoard and Rayport [19].

Step 1 – Observation

Who should be observed? These may be individuals or groups of individuals engaged in

product use.

Who should do the observing? Differences in education and natural inclinations

predispose different people to extract very different information when watching the same

situation. Many individuals are multi-skilled observers, although a team with members of

differing areas of expertise can produce a better quality of data. As the critical essence of

Empathic Design is articulating and responding to customer needs through technological

possibilities, an understanding of these possibilities is necessary within the team.

Step 2 – Capturing data

As Empathic Design inherently pursues observation over inquiry, interpreting peoples’

actions minimises verbatim. Much Empathic Design information is observed through

visual, auditory and sensory cues and so is captured using visual auditory and sensory

tools. Subtle, fleeting, unexpected and involuntary cues can often be missed or lost either

through interpretation or translation to the word or number.

Step 3 – Reflection and Analysis

The team reflects upon what they have observed and reviews their visual information

with a wider audience. These people can offer a different interpretation of the data. Any

issues that have not realised a response form the grounds for further observation. The

essence here is the identification of the users possible problems and needs.

Step 4 – Brainstorming for solutions

Empathic design uses brainstorming to transform observations into graphic, visual

representations of possible solutions. Though this process can be highly creative, it is not

undisciplined. The value of brainstorming is increased as the seeds of ideas are often

sown during this process.

Step 5 – Developing prototypes of possible solutions

The more radical the innovation, the more difficult it is to understand how it should

look, function and be used. As we interpret visual information so too can we stimulate

communication by creating some physical representation of a conceptual solution. These

representations are critical for three reasons. Firstly prototypes clarify the concept for the

development team. Secondly they enable the team to place its concept in front of other

individuals who work in functions not formally represented on the team. And finally,

they can stimulate reaction and foster discussion about the innovation because of their

apparent concreteness.

ESIGNER

NGINEER

IND AND BEHAVIOUR

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1999.

Prototypes, simulations and role-plays can allow designers to experience not only usage

environments but also force them to channel their knowledge within constraints that they

would not normally experience.

Current Industry Use of Empathic Design and User-centred Design

Currently the automotive industry’s use of a user-oriented approach to product design is

limited. This is probably due to the size of the design teams responsible for the

development of cars. Enabling a team of hundreds of designers to empathise with

customers is likely to be significantly more challenging than ensuring small dedicated

consultancy design teams do so.

Toyota’s Lexus division has organisational structures in place to ensure the voice of the

customer is considered in the development of its products [15]. These structures include

dedicated departments and inter-section committees. However the customer information

that this system considers is gathered in fairly conventional ways, for example warranty

surveys, telephone questionnaires and dealer sourced information. This reliance on

negative data allows achievement of basic and linear qualities but provides little scope for

customer delight.

Ford have used some revolutionary approaches to gathering customer information. The

Ford Focus is so named because it is the product of customer focus groups where car

owners identify their car requirements. Ford also used some interesting techniques in

trying to understand fringe users by using sense deprivation suits designed to recreate the

senses of the elderly [20]. Here Ford aims to satisfy the elderly user and hopes that in so

doing the typical user will be delighted. The journalist Helen Mound comments that it

might have been more appropriate if Ford had considered using “Mum suits” that mimic

what it’s like to be a mother with screaming baby. However, these efforts do seem to be

fairly groundbreaking for the automotive industry, and would increase the designer’s

empathy with the customer.

Mazda employ a technique known as Kansei Engineering in the development of their

cars [21]. This technique involves building a database of the keywords that represent their

customers’ feelings towards their products. Factor analysis is used to identify which

product features correlate with these keywords and this information is used to develop

design rules that ensure the desired features are designed into Mazda cars.

Although pioneers of quality research [22], the automotive industry’s approach to

customer satisfaction in design typically follows the standard “do market research, hand

over customer requirements, do QFD” route with all the limitations previously discussed

(see Gustafson for an example of the use of QFD at Volvo [23]).

Daewoo, newly embarked in the automotive industry, claim to stand for customer focus

[24], however their focus is on the experience of owning a car. They consider ownership

as a service and seem less interested in a customer focus in the design of their products,

admitting themselves that their cars are nothing out of the ordinary [24].

Elsewhere the use of an Empathic Design approach to product development tends to be

concentrated in the computer industry or in specialist design consultancies.

Examples of these approaches in the computer industry include the use of customer

observation at home and work by Intuit in the design of accounting software [25].

Microsoft observed customers to identify the different types of software they used whilst

designing their own universally compatible software [26]. Cabletron included a paediatric

cardiologist on its research and development team when designing a computer network

responsible for the display of different formats of patient information around a hospital.

This enabled the design of a better solution by fully understanding how the software and

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1999.

network would be used, what information was needed, and when and where it was used.

[27]. Professor Kenneth Eason describes a framework for the user-centred design of

computer human interaction in the work place, considering the user as more important

than the technology when designing systems that have to be used by non-technically

minded people at work. The emphasis here is the design of systems that make work

easier, rather than highly sophisticated but baffling [27]. Digital Equipment Corp decided

to follow this idea and have taken up a user-centric approach, rather then their previous

techno-centric approach to whole system design [28]. Out of the variety of approaches

taken, the use of in-context observation of system users was recognised by Digital as the

most useful in the definition of early product directions and solutions [28].

In other industries this user centred approach is also taken. The stereo manufacturer

Bose used observation of its customers and users of its products to design speakers that

were easier to install [29]. Electrolux installed web cams in fridges both within their

offices and in the homes of real customers, observing fridge use in context when

designing improved products [30]. Elsewhere the user centred approach to product design

has been used in the design of military footwear [31].

The design consultancies interviewed during this research both use multi-disciplinary

teams to gather user information through organised programmes of observational

research before commencing product design [32]. These organisations emphasise not

only the importance of empathising with customers and users but also the importance of

using different communication mediums for the incorporation of this information into the

design process. Typically these firms use audio and visual presentation methods to

stimulate brainstorming and need identification in design workshops.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research is taking an aggressive action research approach, learning whilst

supporting the development of real cars at EVM. Initial hypotheses have resulted in the

development of tools that will be deployed and refined as a result. Finally multiple

deployments of the tools will prove their usefulness and effectiveness. The knowledge

and tool development occurs in parallel through the following phases (see Diagram 3).

Plan & Build

Previous research [14 & 15] has suggested a series of data capture tools suitable for

eliciting positive information from customers. An extensive review of the existing market

research, design and psychology literature has added to this list of tools and aided the

building of these tools for the application in hand. A concurrent literature review will aid

in the planning of the required knowledge development.

The initial deployment of these data capture tools for the development of a real EVM

car has started and is described later.

Use & Learn

After the initial use of tools a process of evaluation and tool improvement will take

place. In addition the first deployment of the tools will enlighten the design of the data

integration methods that should be used in further deployments. It is planned to repeat the

sequence of tool development, deployment, and evaluation on at least a second EVM

product leading to EVM adopting the procedure into its everyday development process.

Running in parallel to the tool development cycle is a programme of supplementary

research designed to inform the development of both the EVM tool deployment and

deepen our understanding of Empathic Design and Delighter Design. This research takes

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1999.

the form of automotive industry interviews, cross industry interviews, an analysis of the

cultural implications for the tool design, focus groups, and an investigation of delight and

consumer behaviour

Measure & Prove

The development of a generic process for the capture of positive customer/user

information and its use in the product development process is the overall aim of CUPID.

The development of this generic tool will build on the experience and knowledge gained

through the EVM deployments. This stage of the project will include at least one non-

EVM deployment of the tool with aim of identifying the generic elements of the process.

Repeated deployments of the tools in different contexts, and the measurement of the

improvements they realise, will prove the effectiveness of the processes developed and

the validity of the knowledge gained.

Literature Review

Inter-Industry

Interviews

Process

Exploitation

Generic Process

Development

Tool Development

Tool Deployment

Tool Evaluation

Consumer Delight

Research

Non-EVM Tool

Deployment

Cultural Analysis

EVM

PLAN

LEARN

USE

BUILD

Research

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1999.

Diagram 3. The research methodology and project context.

Target benefits

EVM has set CUPID the target of a 60% reduction in the number of late design changes

required due to poor customer understanding in the development process. For a single

vehicle development this represents a saving running into many of millions of pounds.

TOOL DEVELOPMENT

The list of tools identified by the background research [14 & 15] was narrowed down

and initially tested on a real car development programme. A full organisation-wide

implementation of the data capture techniques was not possible and as such these early

stages of the research are purely exploratory.

The following section outlines some of the tools that have been deployed, giving details

of the processes, the analysis of the data collected and the conclusions for the EVM

product development process. In addition the advantages and disadvantages of each tool

will be discussed and the lessons learned will be highlighted.

Scenario of Use

The Scenario of Use is an imagineering tool that aids the understanding of the customer’s

product usage. EVM uses external market research information to identify the target

market for each of their products. This enables a target customer profile to be generated

including this persons typical car usage. Each Scenario of Use takes the form of a short

story describing one of these typical car uses with the target customer as the main

character. The stories are deliberately lacking in detail and are designed to take anyone

considering this target customer through their car use. These story lines are then used to

stimulate discussion or focus observational research.

An example of the generation of a Scenario of Use may be as follows. Market Research

identifies that the largest scope for developing the company’s market share lies in

capturing customers aged over 55 years and that the number of females in this age group

buying cars is increasing. The research then focuses on the car use of females aged over

55, and identifies an average length of journey, how often they use the car alone, what

sort of luggage they carry, how often they go to the supermarket etc. Story lines are then

developed that take account of as much of the target customer’s car usage as possible and

usually describe a car journey. It is important that these story lines remain flexible and

subject to refinement as the research progresses but essentially they form a framework on

which a rich understanding of the customer can be hung with the use of the tools

described below.

Customers can be presented with the scenario individually for comment, or in focus

groups to stimulate discussion. The story line detail can be filled in with observational

research and when used around Europe the Scenario of Use can help identify the cultural

PROVE

MEASURE

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1999.

differences in car use. In future deployments storyboards as well as the written word will

be used to describe the Scenario of Use story lines.

Scenario of Use Workshop

Process

Essentially a focus group discussion, the Scenario of Use Workshop uses one of the story

lines described above to take group members through one aspect of the target customer’s

car usage. The group can be made up of members of the public matching the customer

profile, or a mixture of customers and members of the product development team.

Three facilitators are required to run the workshop. The first is the Actor, and takes the

role of the story line’s main character, acting out the car usage of the target customer

using a mock-up vehicle and props. The second is the Director and is responsible for

using the Scenario of Use story line to direct the Actor through the role-play. The third is

the Data Collector and is responsible for collecting the information elicited through the

group members’ concurrent discussion of the role-play. All three facilitators are charged

with stimulating the discussion and prompting the group members when necessary.

Group members are asked when considering the role-play, to identify their “needs”,

“concerns”, and the “problems” they would experience in this situation, and how their

lives could be made easier. Any additions or corrections to the Actor’s behaviour that are

required for the role-play to accurately represent their car use are also requested. The

group members are asked to record their ideas in one of three categories; “Need”,

“Solution Idea” or “Addition to the Scenario”. The workshop is deliberately informal,

and the group is encouraged to come up with as many ideas and statements as possible,

however obscure.

As the role-play progresses it is the job of the Data Collector to capture each of the

group’s ideas in the language in which it was vocalised. The statements are written out

then posted on boards where the group can refer to them.

The workshop process takes the form of a dynamic, interactive discussion of car use,

and elicits real-time data in the form of customer needs.

Deployment Conclusions

Three Scenario of Use Workshops with differing group members have been conducted.

The first used a group made up of 20 British people representative of the target customer.

The second was made up of 3 target customers and 6 engineers and designers from the

EVM product development team. The final workshop was conducted in Italy with 7

target customers. The following findings were drawn from these three deployments.

The tool is extremely effective at identifying customer needs, including those previously

unrealised by the normal market research techniques used at EVM. The three workshops

outlined above have identified 211 customer needs relating to a single journey type.

When the group contains members of the product development team the dynamic

discussion between designers and customers not only increases the quality of the data

collected, but has the important effect of increasing the designer’s empathy with the

customer. Feedback questionnaires given out at the end of this mixed group workshop

contained comments such as, “Excellent, this has really changed the way I think about the

customer when I’m doing my work.”

The process is applicable in countries other than the U.K. but the use of an interpreter is

required. The data produced is of the same quality.

The tool is particularly useful in exploring customer needs and helps to identify all

problems however trivial. By creating an informal atmosphere and encouraging group

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members to talk through all their needs, the facilitators are able to gain access to

previously unarticulated information.

The workshop technique is highly flexible and has been successfully used with groups

of different sizes, nationalities and roles (engineer/customer). However there are several

deployment issues that still require consideration.

These deployments have shown that the group members sometimes require a certain

amount of prompting to fully articulate their needs. This prompting would be specific to

the facilitators running the workshop and is therefore fairly undesirable. Further

investigation will highlight what stimulus material best initiates the articulation of needs.

Future Scenario of Use Workshop research

To capture the voice of the European customer the Scenario of Use Workshop may have

to be conducted across all major European markets. This would be expensive but would it

be of benefit? Research is planned to discover the risks, costs and benefits of deploying

the tool across multiple countries and cultures? What is the effect of the nationality of the

process facilitators, data analysers, and group members? For example, should the process

be run and analysed by Italians to identify Italian needs, or should the data from around

Europe be collected and analysed by the same researchers. Does the Scenario of Use

story line need to be tailored to each culture, or are the inevitable inaccuracies in the story

line useful cues for eliciting culture specific usage information?

A programme of tool deployments, interviews and observational research is planned to

address these issues and the results should provide a guide indicating the best options for

applying the tools across countries and cultures.

The Murmur of the Customer

Process

This technique involves listening to the comments customers make in reaction to

existing products or concepts placed in public places. The observation takes place

discretely without the customers’ knowledge and can provide insight into which areas of

product are important in product evaluation. An understanding of the static evaluation of

vehicles by customers is crucial if car purchasers are to be delighted in the showroom.

Customer needs can also be expressed and collected in this evaluation situation.

Hidden cameras are used to film the behaviour of people evaluating static cars. The use

of video footage offers several advantages. Firstly it provides a permanent record that can

be referred back to and re-analysed, or used as stimulus for discussion. The quality and

depth of the data captured is very high and the effort required to capture this data is

minimal.

This tool aims to capture data on how customers can be delighted in cars, what this

reaction looks like, and in what areas of the car they concentrate when evaluating the car

as a product.

Limitations of the tool include the fact that the reactions observed are to an existing

product, and that the number of variables in the situation (eg. accompanied visitors or

not, serious purchase intent or not, age, sex, previous owners, etc) make a quantitative

analysis of the data difficult.

Deployment

A miniature black and white camera and microphone were hidden in the dashboard of an

EVM show car at a motorshow. A video recorder mounted under the car recorded over

750 visits to the car. The resulting footage has undergone a qualitative analysis providing

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data on delighting features, evaluation behaviour, areas of attention, the importance of

different senses and the capture of visitor comments. The analysis reveals in which areas

of the car interior customers can be delighted, and highlighted sex and age differences in

evaluation behaviour and attribute priorities.

The benefits of this technique include the data format. The video footage is not only

analysed to produce a deep understanding of evaluation behaviour, but can be used to

stimulate discussion in workshops and to disseminate the data around the design team at

EVM. However the process of translating the information into the written word or a

numerical analysis dilutes the quality and richness of the data. In addition coding of the

data is both a skilled and time-consuming activity. Essentially this tool provides highly

useful insights in an immediately understandable format, but the amount of data captured

in this deployment was excessive.

Future plans for this process include the use of cameras to capture the evaluation of

concept ideas, and reactions to concept vehicles to identify which features should go into

production. This research also proposes recruiting volunteers to carry cameras in their car

to record their everyday usage to help in the identification of user needs in context.

Product In Use

Process

This tool is the closest to the naturalistic observation of product users as proposed by the

Empathic Design approach. Car users are discretely observed using their vehicles in

context. Data is collected using video cameras and undergoes very little analysis before

being used by the product development team. This tool is being tested to identify the

limitations that are encountered due to the nature of the car as a product, and to clarify the

best ways of using this information with in a design process.

Deployment

Video cameras have been used by teams of researchers to film real car users. The

situations recorded are in line with one of the scenario of use story lines, and involve the

loading and unloading of car boots. Car users were recorded in 5 car park locations, 2

supermarkets, 1 DIY store, 1 home furnishing store, and 1 airport. Two hours of

videotape have been produced containing 73 vehicle loadings.

Again quantitative analysis of the video footage is both difficult and unrewarding. The

full quality of the data is only available through the viewing of the edited footage. The

observational nature of this tool allows the identification of occurrences of the cues for

improvement highlighted by Hofmeister [1], including frustrations, user sourced product

modifications, customer needs and wasted time. The footage produced would ideally be

used in brainstorming sessions with the product design team or as stimulus material in

focus group discussions.

The main disadvantage of this tool is the limited scope afforded for its application by

the nature of the car as a product. Observing cars in motion, especially the observation of

the car’s driver when it is in motion proved extremely difficult and would require a

separate tool design. This could involve the use of volunteers carrying cameras in their

cars to identify their driving related needs and problems.

CONCLUSIONS

The following conclusions and managerial implications can be drawn from the research

conducted so far.

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1999.

Firstly the Kano model is applicable to vehicle features. Delight has been observed in

numerous customers in reaction to vehicle qualities that could not be considered Linear

or Basic. These delighting features included the simple presence of some features

answering customer needs in the static vehicle. However the model may require

refinement since delight has been observed in reaction to the exceptional delivery or

design of Basic features such as the gearstick. Likewise a negative reaction has been

observed in reaction to features that customers recognise as good ideas but have been

delivered badly. These findings suggest that, in contradiction to the Kano Model, the poor

execution of an otherwise delightful feature can cause customer dissatisfaction and

excelling in the design of Basic features can provide scope for delighting customers.

Considering features alone is therefore an oversimplification and the delivery of the

features deserves proper consideration when explaining delight in products.

Secondly the use of Empathic Design techniques in the development of cars has proved

an effective means of identifying both unarticulated customer needs and solutions that

have the possibility of delighting customers. The tools used have increased EVM’s

understanding of their target customer and the designers involved in the data collection

have reported an increase in their empathy with the customer. The customer needs

identified through this research, together with several solution ideas developed with

customers in workshops, are currently being incorporated into the development of a car to

be launched by EVM in the new millennium.

Furthermore the adoption of an action research approach has been validated. By

working hand in hand with a real vehicle manufacturer, the researchers learning and

understanding of the problem has been accelerated. The real world application of the

tools developed by the researchers has provided a rigorous test of their effectiveness.

The next stages of this research will investigate the initial hypotheses generated to date.

Some Empathic Design techniques will reliably deliver delighters in complex or mature

products.

An Empathic Design approach is harder to adopt for the large design teams involved in

vehicle development, than for the small dedicated teams of design consultancies.

The Empathic Design tools should not be considered as independent processes. The

information they generate is linked and therefore their deployments should also be.

The use of raw customer information for check back at all stages of the development

process will aid the correct answering of customer needs in the manufactured product.

The capture of customer information in visual formats increases the ability of large

design teams to empathise with this customer.

This research will continue the deployment and evaluation of these and other Empathic

Design techniques both in EVM and another company. These implementations and other

companies’ experiences in Delighter Design will be analysed to refine, add to and

validate the initial findings.

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