Abstract
The need for companies to improve their competitiveness may lead to innovation and the reconceptualization of traditional products and processes, with companies making an effort to enhance product elements related to functionality, attractiveness, technology and sustainability, and implementing mass-customisation concepts. Mass-customised products are developed to satisfy specific customer needs, in line with increasing demand for product variety and customisation. The analysis of what customers really want, capturing the Voice of the Customer (VOC), is one of the strategies used to establish effective product development processes. Using a VOC survey, it is possible to transform customer needs into the functional and psychological requirements of the product. This paper presents a methodology based on Virtual Reality (VR) technologies to support the capturing of the VOC in regard to the visual, haptic and auditory characteristics of products. This method can be applied to the beginning of the product development process, to allow companies to deduce from the data the requirements of new industrial customised products. A flexible and interactive Virtual Prototype (VP) of a product category is then developed as a product platform in a draft version by designers and configured according to customer needs, using an immersive VR environment. This method, based on the use of VP, reduces the number of physical prototypes that need to be manufactured during the product development process, thus reducing overall costs. In addition, the VP based method supports the mass-customisation process of products through the real-time integration and collection of data for product configuration preferences, involving as many users as possible representative of the target users of the new products. To demonstrate this process a case study concerning the development of the VP for a washing machine, a summary of test sessions with users and results are presented. Specifically, the results presented in this paper are related to improvements in capturing the VOC and reductions in Virtual Prototyping cost and time.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akao, Y. (1997). QFD: Past, present, and future. In International symposium on QFD ’97.
Berneburg, A. (2007). Interactive 3D simulations in measuring consumer preferences: Friend or foe to test results? Journal of Interactive Advertising.
Bordegoni M., Colombo G., Formentini L. (2006) Haptic technologies for the conceptual and validation phases of product design. Computers & Graphics 30(3): 377–390
Bordegoni, M., Ferrise, F., Shelley, S., Alonso, M. A., & Hermes D. (2008). Sound and tangible interface for shape evaluation and modification. In HAVE 2008—IEEE international workshop on haptic audio visual environments and their applications, Ottawa, Canada, 18–19 October 2008.
Bordegoni, M., Polistina, S., & Carulli, M. (2010). Mixed reality prototyping for handheld products testing, research in interactive design. In Proceedings of IDMME—virtual concept 2010, Bordeaux, France, 20–22 October, 2010.
Bordegoni, M., Ferrise, F., & Lizaranzu, J. (2011). Use of interactive virtual prototypes to define product design specifications: A pilot study on consumer products. In Proceedings of IEEE—ISVRI, Singapore, 2011.
Buxton B. (2007) Sketching user experiences: Getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc, San Francisco, CA
Clausing D. P. (1994) Total quality development: A step by step guide to world-class concurrent engineering. ASME Press, New York
Cohen L. (1995) Quality function deployment: How to make QFD work for you. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA
Da Silveira G., Borensteinb D., Fogliatto F. S. (2001) Mass customization: Literature review and research directions. International Journal of Production Economics 1(72): 1–13
de Beer, D. J., Campbell, R. I., Truscott, M., Barnard, L. J., & Booysen, G. J. (2009). Client-centred design evolution via functional prototyping. International Journal of Product Development, (8), 1.
De Fanti T. A. et al (2011) The future of the CAVE. Central European Journal of Engineering 1(1): 16–37
Farnell A. (2010) Designing sound. MIT Press, Cambridge
Ferrise, F., Bordegoni, M., & Lizaranzu, J. (2010). Product design review application based on a vision-sound-haptic interface. In Proceedings of HAID 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 6306 (pp. 169–178).
Gilmore, J. & Pine, J. (1997). The four faces of mass customization. Harvard Business Review.
Gupta R., Whitney D., Zeltzer D. (1997) Prototyping and design for assembly analysis using multimodal virtual environments. Computer-Aided Design 29(8): 585–597
Hainich R. R., Bimber O. (2011) Displays: fundamentals and applications. A K Peters/CRC Press, Boca Raton
Hart, C. (1995). Mass customization: Conceptual underpinnings, opportunities and limits. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6(2).
Hvam N. H., Mortensen J. R. (2007) Product customization. Springer, Berlin
Jiao J., Xu Q., Du J., Zhang Y., Helander M., Khalid H. M., Helo P., Ni C. (2007) Analytical affective design with ambient intelligence for mass customization and personalization. International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems 19: 570–595
Jones J. C. (1992) Design methods. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
Kanno, K., Fernando, N., Bolhassan, A., Narita, S., & Cohen, M. (2006). “Personal Practically Panoramic” multimodal interfaces. In IEEE VR 2006 workshop on emerging display technologies.
Kawakita J. (1991) The original KJ method. Kawakita Research Institute, Tokyo
Kim, L., Han, M., Shin, S. K., & Park, S. H. (2008). A haptic dial system for multimodal prototyping. In 18th international conference on artificial reality and telexistence (ICAT 2008).
Kotler, P. (1989). From mass marketing to mass customization. Strategy & Leadership, 17.
Kotler P., Keller K. L. (2006) Marketing management. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Kramer, J., Noronha, S., & Vergo, J. (2000). A user-centered design approach to personalization. Communications of the ACM, (43), 8.
Kroll E., Condoor S., Sridhar S., Jansson D. G. (2001) Innovative conceptual design theory and application of parameter analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Lee J. Y., Rhee G. W., Park H. (2009) AR/RP-based tangible interactions for collaborative design evaluation of digital products. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology 45: 649–665
Loftus E., Wells G. (1984) Eyewitness testimony: Psychological perspectives. Cambridge Univ. Press, New York
Luh, Y. P., Wang, J. B., Chang, J. W., Chang, S. Y., & Chu, C. H. (2012). Augmented reality-based design customization of footwear for children, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing. doi:10.1007/s10845-012-0642-9.
Nam, T. J. (2005). Sketch-based rapid prototyping platform for hardware-software integrated interactive products. In CHI 2005—Proceedings of conference on human factors in computing systems, Portland, USA.
Norman D. A., Draper S. W. (1986) User-centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London
Pahl G., Beitz W., Feldhusen J., Grote K. H. (2007) Engineering design. Springer, Berlin
Park, H., Son, J., & Lee, K. (2008). Design evaluation of digital consumer products using virtual reality-based functional behaviour simulation. Journal of Engineering Design, 19(4).
Peck J., Childers T. L. (2003) To have and to hold: The influence of haptic information on product judgments. Journal of Marketing 67: 35–48
Ren, Y., & Papalambros, P. (2011). Design preference elicitation: Exploration and learning. In International conference on engineering design, ICED11.
Risdiyono, R., & Koomsap, P. (2011). Design by customer: Concept and applications, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing. doi:10.1007/s10845-011-0587-4.
Rocchesso D., Serafin S. (2009) Sonic interaction design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 67(11): 905–906
Santos P. et al (2007) Improve: An innovative application for collaborative mobile mixed reality design review. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing 1(2): 115–126
Shaw M. C. (2001) Engineering problem solving: A classical perspective. Noyes Pub./William Andrew Pub, Norwich
Spence C., Gallace A. (2001) Multisensory design: Reaching out to touch the consumer. Psychology and Marketing 28(3): 267–308
Spool, J. M. (2004). The KJ-technique: A group process for establishing priorities. Resource document. User Interface Engineering. http://medicina.iztacala.unam.mx/medicina/Spool%20KJ%20Technique.pdf. Accessed 2 May 2012.
Tseng, M. M., Jiao, J., & Su, C. J. (1997). A framework of virtual design for product customization. In Emerging technologies and factory automation proceedings, ETFA ’97.
Ulman D. G. (2003) The mechanical design process. McGraw-Hill, New York
Ulwick A. (2005) What customers want: Using outcome-driven innovation to create breakthrough products and services. McGraw-Hill, New York
Wicker A. W. (1969) Attitudes versus actions: The relationship of verbal and overt behavioral responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues 25(4): 41–78
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carulli, M., Bordegoni, M. & Cugini, U. An approach for capturing the Voice of the Customer based on Virtual Prototyping. J Intell Manuf 24, 887–903 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-012-0662-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-012-0662-5