Requirement elicitation in product emotional design using fuzzy clustering and fuzzy cognitive model

Customer’s emotional requirements get more and more attention in the product development. While this has been addressed by technologies, like kansei engineering, the difficulty remains in handling the differences of an individual kansei. This cognitive dissonance commonly occurs in interactions between design domain and consumer domain. Correct understanding of customer feelings and subsequently relating them to product design elements is helpful for improving design quality. This article proposes a fuzzy cognitive model to establish synesthesia between customer and designer. The novel model can improve the accuracy of requirement transmission and assist design activities. The feasibility of this method is verified by an example of mobile phone. It will find application in product conceptual design and evaluation.