No one has ever heard of Kano when I mention to them. I didn’t know what it was a few months ago, except for that guy with one eye in the original Mortal Kombat who would curl up into a ball and project himself at opponents. I stopped playing after MK II and never saw the movies so that’s all I know. I think he was a criminal who had beef with Sonya Blade and cut her head off in MKI and then that other guy Jax with the metal arms who would slam the ground and make an earthquake is now on a quest to kill Kano or something like that…Anyway, I’ve learned a lot about another type of Kano due to a development project I’ve been working for the Customer Focused Design (CFD) group headed by a guy named CJ which is a partner of the EEC where I work.

The name of the group is pretty self-explanatory. It’s more or less about everything associated with interacting with customers about software before it is released.  It is good to find out what they want and don’t want so that upon release, the code is more on point. Kano is a theory (by a Professor Kano) based upon this concept. There is a method for surveying potential future customers about features. There are 2 questions per feature, kind of a 1a and 1b and so on sort of thing. Responses will be a number 1-5, with each number representing a level of sat- or dissatisfaction. We then compare the numbers for each respondent in a grid where their reply to each questions A and B are related and a particular combination represents a certain value(A, I,M,O,Q,R)  in Kano theory. We then tabulate the totals, calculate percentages, and then put all the data into two equations; one for Satisfaction and one for Dissatisfaction. These two numbers represent Cartesian X, Y coordinates. We graph the values for all survey questions (at this point there is 1 value per survey question). Kano theory states that through the research, math, logic, science, etc , etc each quadrant represents a certain level of desire for the feature (see the chart at the above Kano link). Thus, where the points land on the graph determine whether a future is “a good look” or not. Next, I’ll describe the code I wrote to automate Kano (we call it Push-Button Kano).

 

Stan