New Kano Model for better design decisions and hidden market opportunities

Many people wrongly assume that so-called Kano model (diagram on the right) describes the relationship between customer needs, fulfillment of product features, and satisfaction.

The1984 research, "Attractive Quality and Must-Be Quality" by N. Seraku, F. Takahashi, and N. Kano, Ph.D.,  measured satisfaction merely against the existence or absence of a feature. It did not and does not address customer needs.

Additionally, the Kano categories came from customer survey responding to inverse-paired questions. They were not and are not assigned by product engineers or producers.

The most serious error that people often make is the misleading "curved-arrow" that is often cited as shown in the above diagram. The inverse-paired question yields only two data points:  the "if" and the "if not". You can only draw a line (= linear) with two data points. It takes three data points to inscribe a curve!  This is why Glenn Mazur (QFD Institute), who translated Kano's original Japanese paper into English over two decades ago, wonders how many people who cite the Kano model actually read their study.

This problems was addressed by Mr. Harold Ross, a now retired General Motors engineer and a director of the QFD Institute. He called this the New Kano Model, which adds the necessary questions to draw the "curve" and use it to reveal hidden market segments and extrapolate better design decisions.

Using the Modern QFD tools that are taught in the QFD Black Belt^® course, you can then identify the invisible, moving target of customer satisfaction that the original Kano model does not address.

This new methodology will be presented at the 26th Symposium on QFD, December 5, 2014 in Charleston, South Carolina USA. It will include implementation examples of automotive industry, development of marketing and advertising content, as well as identifying clearer performance targets for each customer segment.

Everyone is welcomed at this symposium, regardless of your QFD knowledge.
Here is how to attend.

Young business travelers' technology needs

Over 15 years ago, the Delta Hotel chain in Canada sought to attract business travelers by being one of the first major hotel chains to offer business-oriented office suites. Notably, at the time, these suites included a computer which could allow business travelers to work on the road, instead of being “stranded” from the office in an era when laptops were costly and scarce.

Unfortunately, the designers of these rooms didn’t entirely understand the needs of their targeted customers or what being productive entailed to them (read details in "Close Encounter of the QFD Kind", a white paper PDF).  While the offices were fully furnished, the computers were not — they did not come with commonly used software packages, meaning the guest not only had to bring their own software disks with them but would also have to waste time installing the programs themselves, in order to get any use out of the computer besides Solitaire.

Today, we consider an office space, complete with Microsoft Office^® or Open Office^® as well as access to a printer, to be standard in any hotel chain, but do these actually make us more productive?  Technologically speaking, these accommodations are obviously better than what Delta offered years ago, however they represent an even more grievous misunderstanding of customers’ needs than was found on the blank computers back then.

From a QFD perspective, these computers are seen as a feature, and although they’ve been tweaked and upgraded over the years (their performance level is higher than ever), they address needs that have already been met by much better alternatives, and fail to address newer needs that have been enabled by changing technology.

Widespread usage of laptops and tablets have made office suite computers unneeded, the prevalence of proprietary software and custom remote login systems have made them unusable, and the nature of the internet and shared computer usage have made them unsafe. Furthermore, the original underlying need for productivity has been joined by the needs for entertainment and communication, and in that regard there is very little opportunity for hotel offices to compete with gaming laptops, Facetime^® or Skype^®.

Rather than trying to meet these needs by offering competing features, hotels should be trying to facilitate the features customers already have that meet their needs.  Simply put, this means replicating (or besting) the connectivity customers have on their laptops, tablets and phones that they travel with.

For example, many hotels advertise access to broadband. Often these connections, however, perform quite poorly on technical benchmarks (bandwidth tests) and outright fail on customer benchmarks (ability to watch Youtube videos, play games or video chat and so forth).  This can be exacerbated by poor cell phone coverage, which may force a customer to leave the hotel in order to be reachable at all.  If there’s any doubt that failing to meet travelers’ needs of connectivity can affect repeat business, one survey found that nearly 60% of travelers aged 35–54 would consider a different hotel option if they had poor cell phone reception during their previous stay.


This actually falls into the 'reverse quality' category in the Kano model of expected quality vs. exciting quality. What is exciting quality for older generations of hotel guests (such as having free internet and computer access) has not only become expected quality for younger hotel guests, but also the poor fulfillment of hotel room TV and internet may even be reverse quality — that is, their existence dissatisfies!

Any hotel that’s serious about catering to business travelers must understand these needs, as well as other needs such as internet security, in a modern and changing context, rather than continuing to refresh old features.

Ken Mazur

Related Read...

• "General Motors and Gemba Maestro: How to translate VOC into true customer needs"

•  "Defining Luxury for Today's Business Travelers"

• "Translating Voice of Customer into True Customer Needs"

Microsoft Office^® is a registered mark of Microsoft, Open Office^® Apache Software; FaceTime^® Apple Inc.; Skype^® Skype.

  

GPS Gemba shows need for Kano

In a study by Barry Brown of the Mobile Life Center in Sweden, “The Normal Natural Troubles of Driving With GPS,” global positioning system failures were often found to be the result of driver errors, such as wrong inputs, misreading display, etc.

The study is cited in a recent New York Times article by Randall Stross, a business professor at San Jose State University,  that concludes that no technology will ever eradicate this human error.

The article described Dr. Brown's field study of installing video cameras in test vehicles to capture the GPS instructions, drivers' responses, and conversations when things went wrong. In QFD, we call this "going to gemba" or the place where unscripted user behavior reveals the real truth about customer needs. Gemba visits should be done prior to development to gain knowledge, as well as during design to test and validate solutions.

The conclusion by Dr. Stross reminded me of Dr. Noriaki Kano's model of Attractive Quality Creation, where he introduced the concept of exciting and expected quality. QFD users, of course, are very familiar with the classical Kano model as well as the QFD Institute's modern New Kano Model.

Dr. Kano cites one of his early experiments with Mr. T. Yoneyama of Konica, the Japanese camera company that later merged with Minolta.

In their study at film processing and photograph printing labs (also a gemba), they noticed that the largest number of poor quality pictures were those that were out of focus or under exposed. These problems were operator error, not mechanical failures of the camera. Most of these photographs were taken by amateurs who did not have the professional skills to adjust the camera properly, but never complained to the lab or to the camera maker.

Like in the GPS study, Konica could have just blamed the unskilled customers. But with Dr. Kano's guidance, they did something different – they introduced the built-in auto flash in 1974 and the auto focus in 1977, thus revolutionizing the amateur and later professional camera industry.

In other words, if products or services fail to satisfy, makers should adopt this attitude that their design is at fault, not their customers. Positively stated, these failures are actually opportunities to create exciting products with disruptive technologies.