The Kano Model for Prioritization

The Kano model is a theory of customer satisfaction and product development created in the 80’s by Professor Noriaki Kano. It classifies customer preferences into four categories: Performance, Attractive, Must-Be, and Indifferent. It provides techniques to help understand customers’ perspectives on product features by assessing two measures for each feature: the satisfaction and sentiment, and the responses to the two measures will fall into one of the four categories.

SATISFACTION AND SENTIMENT – THE TWO MEASURES

Kano proposes two dimensions to represent how customers feel about our products:
– one that goes from total satisfaction (also called Delight and Excitement) to total dissatisfaction (or Frustration);
– and another called Investment, Sophistication or Implementation, which represents how much of a given feature the customer gets, how well we’ve implemented it, or how much we’ve invested in its development.

THE FOUR CATEGORIES OF FEATURES

Performance

Some product features behave as what we might intuitively think that Satisfaction works: the more we provide, the more satisfied our customers become.

Must-be
Other product features are simply expected by customers. If the product doesn’t have them, it will be considered to be incomplete or just plain bad. This type of features is usually called Must-be or Basic Expectations. 

Attractive
There are unexpected features which, when presented, cause a positive reaction. These are usually called Attractive, Exciters or Delighters.

Indifferent
Naturally, there are also features towards which we feel indifferent. Those which their presence (or absence) doesn’t make a real difference in our reaction towards the product.

THE KANO QUESTIONNAIRE

In order to uncover our customer’s perceptions towards the product’s attributes, we need to use the Kano questionnaire. It consists of a pair of questions for each feature we want to evaluate:

• One asks our customers how they feel if they have the feature;
• The other asks how they feel if they did not have the feature.

The first and second questions are respectively called the functional and dysfunctional forms. To each “how do you feel if you had / did not have this feature”, the possible answers are:

HOW TO USE IT

Craft a questionnaire with each feature listed separately. For each feature, ideally you demonstrate the what the feature can do through a prototype or interactive wireframe, when possible. Don’t spend much time prototyping for this: it’s just a prototype to get the idea across. Some people can get really tied up in the details even in prototypes, because they may like the idea, but not how it was implemented.

The questionnaire consists of a pair of questions for each feature we want to evaluate:

• One asks our customers how they feel if they have the feature;
• The other asks how they feel if they did not have the feature.

The first and second questions are respectively called the functional and dysfunctional forms. To each “how do you feel if you had / did not have this feature”, the possible answers are:

• I like it
• I expect it
• I am neutral
• I can tolerate it
• I dislike it

For each answer-pair, we use this table to determine the category where the respondents falls, letting us know how he or she feels about the feature.

From the individual responses and resulting categories you can go into two levels of analysis:

• Discrete: each answer-pair is classified using the table above and feature’s category will be the most frequent across all respondents;
• Continuous: each functional and dysfunctional answer gets a numerical score, which can then be averaged over all respondents and plotted on a 2D graph.As a general rule of thumb, features should be prioritized such that this order is followed: Must-Be > Performance > Attractive > Indifferent.

CONCLUSION: WHAT DELIGHTS TODAY…

Here is the Kano analysis in summary:

• The Kano analysis helps to identify unspoken needs before prioritization.
• It is intended to help prioritize customer needs.
• It should be linked to a company’s multi-generational project plan.
• Generation 1 has to cover the “must be’s.”
• The company must realize that customers’ expectations and/or needs vary over time.

There is an extensive, in-depth guide to the Kano model that explains the entire process and gives you a step-by-step guide on how to use it. But if you are looking for a customer-centric and needs-based approach to prioritization, give the Kano Model a try.