Integrated evaluation of functional and visual design towards sustainability

This paper discusses a method to quantitatively evaluate the importance of functional and visual design. Using smartphones as a case study, the paper proposes a procedure to evaluate both functional and visual design. The paper applies pair comparison to know the relative importance of 4 visual design specifications that are “color,” “texture,” “thickness” and “customizability” which means variety of optional parts such as cases, headsets, protection sheets etc., and one functional design specification which is “battery capacity.” Then, the result of our previous survey regarding relative importance of 5 functional design specifications was integrated. The result showed that in smartphones, functional design specifications are basically important than visual design specifications. But, the difference with “memory size” and “customizability” was small. This fact suggested that by focusing on providing various optional parts rather than increasing memory size, it can be possible to enhance product value without increasing environmental impact.