[Sigia-l] User satisfaction vs. dissatisfaction ratios for unsolicited feedback

[George Olsen]

Laura Quinn wrote:
> the Kano survey you mention does sound like an extremely useful
> feature prioritization technique.  Can you recommend a source that would
> tell me more about it, how to do it, etc?

For in-depth reading Sheila Mello's "Customer-Centric Product Definition"
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814406688/interactionby-20/002-7723352-5434432>
has a chapter devoted to Kano -- as well as several other useful
prioritization techniques and other user research-related stuff from a
traditional product development perspective. It's interesting to see the
convergence.

Since not everyone has the time for a full book:

* The short-attention-span summary is available at
<http://www.satmansys.com/Services%20Pages/Kano.htm> It's actually a promo
page for a services company, but gives a quick descrption and shows the
Kano chart used to plot the results.

* For a quick summary including a case study, check out
<http://www.goncalves.com/reprint2.pdf > About 3 pages.

* A thorough, but slightly academic, discussion of the Kano method is
available at the Center for Quality of Management Journal
<http://cqmextra.cqm.org/cqmjournal.nsf/issues/vol2no4> 30+ pages. If you
look in their archives by topic, they've also got some other articles of
interest under the "Voice of the Customer" section.

One important thing to point out -- some of the Kano terms are poorly
thought chosen (or poorly translated from Japanese). Here's my
"translation" of the four key Kano terms:

* Attractive or Exciting  -- The unexpected bonus. People love it when
it's there, but won't complain if it's absent. Cupholders originally were
an example of this when they first came out. Now they're expected
features, which illustrates a nice aspect of the Kano model, it talks
about how the bar gets raised. The most powerful selling points come when
you find things in this area.

* Must-be or Basic Requirements -- I think these are better called
"expected" features. They're like the brakes on your car. No points they
work properly but people will get upset if they don't.

* One-dimensional or Satisfiers -- People's satisfaction
increases/decreases proportionate to how well the feature works. A good
example is gas mileage. I don't like either term, but I don't have one yet
that's clearer. Maybe "more/less satisfying"?

* Indifferent - Just what it says, people don't care one way or the way
about a particular feature. The key thing to point out is that customers
may _say_ they want these if you ask them to list thing, but in context
they turn out not to be important.


_____________________________________________________________________
George Olsen                           george at interactionbydesign.com
User Experience Architect                                310-993-0467