QDD Redux: Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction in Product Design (the Kano Model)

How do you balance customer wants with project constraints? If your customer-facing teammates are saying our customers want this, that and the other thing, which ones do we prioritize over others?

Not all features are equal in the eyes of our customers. And not all features are value-added, either.

In this episode, we delve into how to prioritize customer wants using the powerful Kano Model, a tool that maps customer satisfaction against the implementation of product features.

You'll learn how to differentiate between essential and non-essential features, ensuring that your design truly resonates with your customers. This episode walks through the intricacies of the Kano Model's two-by-two matrix and the different satisfaction levels represented by various lines and curves.

Too complex? We break it down. Prioritize your features based on their impact to the customer using their voice. Then, consider how well you want to implement that in your design using the Kano Model.

Get ready for practical tips and proven strategies to enhance your product’s value while managing cost, time, and design trade-offs. This episode is an introduction to the Kano Model for design.

Visit the podcast blog for a Kano Model and examples to help you put it into practice.

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ABOUT DIANNA
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations and people improve engineering design.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're in a great situation.
You just got invited to be aparticipant in new product
development.
It's a new project.
You're still developing designinputs and gathering them.
When you're talking with yourcustomer, facing teammates, this
could be marketing or sales orfield ops when you're talking
with them, they are giving you alot of customer wants and some

(00:24):
may also be categorized as needs, but basically they're saying
our customers want this and theywant that and they really want
this thing.
Well, these may all beimportant to the customers, but
are they all equally important?
Let's talk about how toprioritize these customer wants
for design after this briefintroduction.

(00:46):
Hello and welcome to QualityDuring Design, the place to use
quality thinking to createproducts others love for less.
I'm your host, diana Deeney.
I'm a senior level qualityprofessional and engineer with
over 20 years of experience inmanufacturing and design.
I consult with businesses andcoach individuals on how to
apply quality during design totheir processes.

(01:09):
Listen in and then join us.
Visit qualityduringdesigncom.
So you are in the early phasesof a development project and
you're getting a lot of customerwants.
They want this, that and theother thing, and we do want to
try to provide our customerswhat they want.
We also know that we're goingto have to balance those wants

(01:33):
against other limitations of theproject, be it cost.
Maybe the customers wantsomething, but the cost to
implement that or just the costto make that available is
prohibitive.
We could also be looking atsome time constraints, because
there is a time to marketconsideration and then there are
also other trade-off decisionsthat we need to make in our

(01:54):
design.
If we give our customers thisthing, then we may not be able
to give them the other thingbecause they conflict.
We can't do the same thing.
We have to choose one or theother.
So how do we prioritize all ofthese kind of wants?
We can prioritize them based ona level of customer
satisfaction associated with anyparticular feature of the

(02:19):
design that we're considering.
I like to think of it as if weare assigning a specific
severity rating to a potentialrisk, but instead we are
assigning a customersatisfaction rating to a
potential benefit.
And one of the great thingsabout using quality tools is
somebody's already done that andwe can borrow something that

(02:41):
someone's already done, thatother people have had success
with, and apply it to our ownprojects to prioritize the
customer wants and benefits ofour concept design the quality
tool that I'm talking about iscalled a Kano model.
It's named after Dr NoriakiKano and he introduced it in
1984.

(03:01):
So we are celebrating the 40thyear anniversary of the Kano
model.
What the Kano model does is itrelates customer satisfaction
with a level of implementationof particular features.
It is a special type of two bytwo chart.
On the y-axis is customersatisfaction.

(03:23):
The higher the y-axis you go,the more satisfied the customer
is.
On the y-axis is customersatisfaction the higher the
y-axis you go, the moresatisfied the customer is.
On the x-axis is level ofimplementation.
And the better that youimplement this particular
feature into your product design, the farther along we are on
the x-axis, on the positive side, when our customer-facing

(03:44):
teammates are saying ourcustomers want this, the Kano
model provides an area where wecan plot that particular feature
request against how much ourcustomers are going to be
satisfied if they have it andhow well we want to implement it
.
But that's not the only thingthat it does.
I mentioned the Kano model is aspecial two by two matrix

(04:08):
because it's not blank.
Depending where you look upKano model, you'll find anywhere
from three to five differentcategories of customer
satisfaction to implementationrelationships.
These are lines or curves onthis two by two matrix.
Now why would we want to addthese kind of lines or sections?

(04:32):
Dr Kano wanted to demonstratethat not all features of a
product are equal in the eyes ofthe customer and that not all
features that are provided areactually value added.
Some retract from the value inthe customer's eyes.
When I use a Kano model, I usefive different lines in the two

(04:55):
by two matrix.
Two of them are positive, twoare in the middle and one of
them is a negative.
So let's get the negative oneout of the way.
It's a reverse attribute.
This line is really on herejust to represent that sometimes
we provide features or need tohave or develop features in our
product that our customersreally don't like.

(05:17):
When we hear our teammates saythings like our customers have
problems with this feature orthey have difficulty using this
particular feature of ourproduct, that could be
attributed as a reverse feature.
This is something that we havein our product that our
customers don't like and it mayactually detract from them
buying and using our product.

(05:39):
So we don't want to use these.
This reverse line is crashingdown into the bottom right of
our two by two chart.
We just want to design theseout.
If we can Almost mirror imageto the reverse is a line that
quickly goes up to the upperright of our two by two matrix

(06:00):
and that is attractive.
Those are the things thatcustomers didn't expect, that
are really delightful, are asurprise for them to use.
These are attractive featuresbecause if we have a couple of
these, it might be a decidingfactor for if they want to
purchase and use our product.

(06:21):
In between these two is aone-dimensional.
It tracks diagonally throughour chart.
The more we have of thisfeature, this one-dimensional
feature, the more our customersare going to be satisfied, the
more they're going to like it.
There are two more lines onthis Kano chart that I use.

(06:41):
One is neutral If it's notreally providing any kind of
value, if it's just kind ofthere.
But it needs to be there andour customers don't really care
if it's there or not, it'sneutral.
But our last line is a littlemore tricky.
This one is the must be.
These are the things ourcustomers expect to have

(07:03):
minimally in, whatever it isthat they're buying or using.
If we do a bad job atimplementing this, if it's not
done at all, our customers arereally dissatisfied and they're
not going to want to use it.
But our line curves up andtracks along the x-axis.
So even if we implement it alittle bit, our customers will

(07:27):
be satisfied.
But they will never be ecstaticor excited about our product
with our must-be features.
Unless you've used the Kanomodel before, it can seem a
little bit overwhelming.
I introduced the Kano modelduring one of my presentations
at the Reliability,maintainability and Managing

(07:49):
Risk Conference in Pittsburgh.
After my presentation there wasquestions and discussion and
another attendee offered anexample that helped clarify it
for a lot of people.
So let me share that examplewith you.
When we are shopping around,sometimes the products that
we're choosing between havedifferent levels that we can buy

(08:11):
into.
Think of the internet, tv andphone plan that you may have at
home, or your cellular plan oreven a software plan that you
want to buy into.
There's usually a table thatlists a basic plan, a plus plan
and then a super plus plan, andunderneath that are all the

(08:34):
features that you get with thosedifferent plans.
The basic plan has a few of thefeatures checked, the basic
plus has a few more and then thesuper duper Uber option has all
the checkboxes checked.
It includes all the featuresand all the things.
That feature table is like theKANA model applied in principle.

(08:58):
We don't have to offer ourcustomers three different
options or more than threedifferent options if we don't
want to.
Maybe we just have one thatwe're offering them.
The Kano model will help us toprioritize the customer wants
and then also help us todetermine how well we want to

(09:19):
implement that into our productdesign.
How do we apply this when we'retalking with our teammates and
they're giving us a list ofwants?
Because that's the ultimategoal.
We want to be able toprioritize these customer wants
and potential benefits so thatwe can make design decisions.
We can set up the differentcategories of the KANA model

(09:41):
like we do a severity ratingscale, except we're going to
label different categories from1 to 5.
1 is reverse, 2 is neutral, 3is must be, 4 is one-dimensional
and 5 is attractive.
The numbers don't really meananything other than just a quick

(10:03):
visual reference and comparisonfor prioritization.
If our teammates give us fivedifferent customer wants, they
want all of these things.
We may not be able to providethem all, so let's dig a little
bit deeper and take it to thenext step.
If we provide this feature forthe customer.

(10:23):
What kind of impact will ithave on them If they want this
feature and they get it?
What are they going to sayabout it?
If they say I expect this, thismust be as a minimum.
If it's done badly, I tolerateit, but I'm dissatisfied, then
this would be a three, a must be, type of feature.

(10:46):
Now, say, with another feature,our customers would say
something different.
They would say I want this, themore of it, or the better I get
it, the more satisfied I am.
Then we would rate that as afour, a one-dimensional type of
feature, where that feature hasa direct relationship to the
level of customer satisfaction.

(11:08):
If our teammates are saying ourcustomers really want this
they're saying they want this orthey use this other product and
they think that's really neatand if we provide it here, we
think they'll really like it.
Maybe we would associate thatwith customer statements like
I'm delighted or excited, Ididn't even know I wanted this,

(11:29):
or that this was possible Thenthat could be rated as a five,
an attractive kind of feature.
So now already, just with thesethree examples we have one of
each we have a must be aone-dimensional and an
attractive feature that ourteammates are asking to
incorporate into this design.
Now, knowing this, categorizingthese requests in this way, we

(11:55):
can think about the differentlines that they're associated
with.
On the two-by-two KANA modelWith the must-be input, these
inputs can correspond withthings that are critical to
quality.
So it has to be an outcome ofthe design, but maybe it doesn't
need to be fully implemented orthe best we can discuss with

(12:18):
our team.
What level of implementation dowe really need to satisfy our
customers?
Where along the Kano model'sx-axis would the must-have line
level off?
Then we can weigh the effortsand the cost to make it fully
functional against the levelneeded to satisfy the customer.

(12:39):
With a feature request that wasone-dimensional or rating a four
, this design input cancorrespond with something that's
critical to satisfaction.
We want the design to havethese features and the more or
the better the features areimplemented, the more satisfied
our customers are going to be.
With these one-dimensionalfeatures, we can consider how

(13:03):
can we best implement thisfeature in our design.
If the better we can do it, howgood can we do it and how will
that affect our customersatisfaction For the request
that's associated with anattractive feature?
These are design inputs thatcorrespond with things that are

(13:24):
critical to motivation.
This feature can differentiateyour design from the rest of the
market.
We want to explore ways that wecan implement and enhance these
features.
When we use the Kano model tothink about customer wants in
this way, to be able toprioritize them, we can see that

(13:45):
increasing the must-be featuresdoesn't really help us
differentiate ourselves fromcompetitor products and we know
that one-dimensional featureshave a direct impact on customer
satisfaction and the attractivequalities can really set
ourselves apart from thecompetition.
As a consumer yourself, you'llrecognize that there are

(14:07):
temporal dynamics in the condomodel.
Things aren't static.
What was once attractive orexciting can just become a
must-be.
Think about the evolution ofthe cell phone between
BlackBerrys and the touchscreen.
At one point the touchscreenwas really attractive and

(14:28):
exciting, but now it no longeris.
It's just an accepted must-be.
So the things that we think ourcustomers see as attractive can
shift into must-bes over time.
It can also happen in reversewhat once was neutral can become
attractive if we repackage itor redesign it to be better.

(14:52):
Sticking with a mobile phoneexample, most of us now have
touchscreen phones, but nowthere's an iteration where phone
that can fold out and provide abigger and better touchscreen.
So using the categories of theKano model, together with the
voice of the customer statements, can help us prioritize during

(15:15):
engineering implementation.
So what's today's insight toaction?
Just like we rate potentialrisks with a severity to be able
to prioritize and makedecisions, we can rate our
different customer wants andrequests with the categories of
a Kano model.
We can then apply the thoughtprocesses of the Kano model,

(15:38):
that special two by two chart,to be able to help us decide how
well we want to implement itinto our product design.
We can evaluate how well toimplement these feature requests
by the value that theycontribute.
At qualityduringdesigncom,there is a podcast blog For most

(15:58):
all podcasts.
There is at least a blog On thepodcast blog.
For this episode, I'll includethe Kana model and some other
lists and tables that may behelpful for you to introduce
this idea to your team and applyit in practice.
While you're visiting the blog,scroll to the bottom of the

(16:19):
page and sign up for thenewsletter.
This has been a production ofDini Enterprises.
Thanks for listening.