Prioritization of aesthetic attributes of car profile

The viability and success of a product in the market depends on its aesthetic design. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a structured methodology for the design a new product with improved quality. The Kano model has been found to be a useful tool to establish the relationship between performance criteria. In order to make its use more objective, fuzzy Kano modeling may be more beneficially applied than the traditional Kano modeling. A fuzzy approach has been adopted for calculation of the relative importance of different aesthetic attributes. The proposed method has been illustrated using customer survey data. Four out of 12 aesthetic attributes (i.e., elegant, family-feeling, modern, and youthful) were found to be attractive (more significant). Relevance to industry: This research paper presents an integrated approach that convert customer's emotions into usable design data. This enables industrial counselors, professional product designers and academician to categorize requirements of users that can be subsequently incorporated into final product design. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.