The Kano Model is a Six Sigma tool that prioritizes the features of a product or service based on how customers view them. Product development teams can weigh the advantages of putting money and time into a certain attribute based on how well it will satisfy customers in three areas: basic needs, performance and excitement.
It is a valuable tool for keeping a business focused on prioritizing what customers need. Managers can use the Kano Model to group proposed elements of a new product or service into categories and determine whether customers would find them useful, satisfying or even exciting.
How The Kano Model Judges Product Attributes
Professor Noriaki Kano developed the Kano Model in Japan in the 1980s. The idea was to create something that classified customer preferences for attributes of a product or service. He grouped these customer reactions into five categories: attractive, performance, indifferent, must-be and undesired.
Since that time, people have used different terms for those given areas. As mentioned above, many now categorize people’s reactions into three basic groups.
Basic needs: This falls into Kano’s “must-be” category. These are attributes of a product or service that are essential to customers and that they take for granted. Conversely, not meeting these needs will leave customers unhappy and likely searching for another business to fulfill their basic needs.
Performance: These attributes distinguish a product from others on the market and improve the product’s performance in some way. The automotive industry is filled with examples of this, from the advent of automatic windshield wipers to today’s self-parking and other smart car features.
Excitement: These attributes create excitement in consumers. This can include attributes that fall into Kano’s original “attractive” category. These are elements that, whether they improve performance or not, generate excitement.
Customer sentiment in these areas is typically gathered using a survey. However, as noted by IBM Design, it is imperative that the product design team already have a solid idea of what will be included in the product. Any large deviation from the current design will make the Kano Model invalid – they will have to start all over again from the beginning.
Benefits of the Kano Model
The Kano Model prevents time wasted working on attributes that will not please customers or leave them indifferent. It also helps businesses determine when a product attribute moves from attractive to becoming a must-have. That is something people expect in certain types of products.
For example, IBM Design notes that in 2001 an ethernet connection provided by your hotel seemed cutting edge and exciting. By 2017, that would have moved from “attractive” to “undesired” because of the emergence of Wi-Fi.
Using customer surveys allows product teams to understand what people expect right now, not in the past. If companies design products for yesterday’s consumer, they will fall behind what people really want in their products. An example of this is the sudden drop of Blackberry phones, which relied on keyboards, after the invention of touch screens used by iPhones.
Kano Model Examples
One famous use of the Kano Model did not actually involve the model, but the kind of thinking it hoped to inspire. When engineers at Apple had trouble in deciding where to put the power button on a still-in-development iPod, Apple CEO Steve Jobs simply suggested they remove it all together.
This seemed shocking and revolutionary at the time because every type of electronic device in those days had an on/off switch. But customers, Jobs reasoned, did not need a power button. It did not fill a basic need, and it certainly did not excite them. The rest is history.
Not everyone is Steve Jobs, obviously. But using gathering data through surveys and creating a Kano Model can help companies to build products based on what future customers actually want.
