Optimizing product design using the Kano model and QFD

In this paper, an approach combining the Kano model and quality function deployment (QFD) is proposed to meet customer requirements in product design. The Kano model provides an effective way to categorizing customer requirements and helps understand the nature of these requirements. The Kano model categories the customer satisfaction into three fields, namely, "must be", "attractive" and "exciting". QFD is a customer-focused product design method. It can transfer customer requirements to products' engineering characteristics. By combining the two methods, we can provide a new way to optimize the product design. The proposed methods can be useful to both practitioners and researchers.