The study of Kansei Engineering applied to the VHCQC Web portal.

Majerik, Marian ; Esse, Martin

1. INTRODUCTION

Qualities of usefulness, usability and desirability play a central role in the good design of all digital products and digital environments such as web portal. The Virtual Healthcare Quality Centre web portal (VHCQC) embeds affective appeal is seen to offer consumer positive experience visiting the website.

2. WHAT IS KANSEI ENGINEERING

"What looks good? For me, what looks good is what 'feels' good," renowned architect Michael Graves was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview.

Kansei Engineering is a method for translating feelings and impressions into product features, invented in the 1970s by Professor Mitsuo Nagamachi (Dean of Hiroshima International University). Kansei Engineering can "measure" the feelings and shows the relationship to certain product properties. In consequence, products can be designed to bring forward the intended feeling. The Kansei Engineering began with sensory or sensitivity engineering at the starting point. However, current Kansei Engineering is the trans-disciplinary engineering that extends over the humanities, social science and natural science. Filtering, acquiring information, estimating, recognizing, modelling, making relationship, producing, giving information, presenting and etc. are the contents of Kansei (Grimsaeth, 2005).

2.1 An Example

Web sites can be described with adjectives like transparent, simply for using and elegant. But, which parameters influence these impressions? Kansei Engineering can show to what extent product attributes have an effect on these impressions. Target values for the mentioned product properties can be derived.

3. GOAL OF THE STUDY

The study attempts to explore user's emotional responses to VHCQC web portal (www.improhealth.org) (Zgodavova, 2006) and demonstrates all necessary changes to make the new web portal www.fsev.tnuni.sk/improheath be better. This aim is in line with the idea of Kansei Engineering that is to participate consumer's emotion into web portal design. An application of Kansei Engineering to the VHCQC Webportal consists of more steps; the most important are decision strategy, correction of Kansei words, setting of scale of Kansei words, correction of explored web portal samples (properties), and analysis using numerical evaluation, explanation improvements to the designer (Zgodavova, 2006). We want locate the concrete features (from huge quantify of all properties) which are interesting for final portal's users and make them better (from the affective point of view). The methodical background was based on Kansei measuring through the words of user's potential emotional requirements for improvements.

4. THE SELECTION WEB PORTAL PROPERTIES AND KANSEI WORDS

Each product has too many properties and functions which can be evaluated and developed for the better using and viewing (Zgodavova, 2006). We selected the group of concrete properties; we obtained knowledge for composing following four group (Fig.1) of web portal's properties: Manageability, Attractiveness, Security and Readability.

Altogether fourteen portal's properties were identified in consultation with the IT experts. These are divided into four categories (four groups of portal's properties and). Details are shown in Table 1.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

After identification of web portal's properties we span the semantic space. The most common way of Kansei Engineering measuring is through words (Kansei word pairs), because words are tool for man's feeling expression (Grimsaeth, 2005; Nagamachi, 2007). We made the list which included a big set of multifarious words related to the web portal. In our study we selected following word pairs to better evaluating properties of explored portal:

* complicated / elementary

* confused / synoptic

* difficult / easy

* unpractical / practical

* boring / elegant

* ordinary / modern

* inaccessible / accessible (for blind people)

* professional / unprofessional

* appealing / afflictively

* sophisticated / simple

* dismal / positive

* absent / present

* meaningful / futile

We used this semantic space for evaluating of each property from the previous step. For example, on the uppermost right edge (Fig. 2) are situated properties which were evaluated as the most inopportune properties of web portal (number marks in Fig.2 are taken from Table 1). The VHCQC web portal quality evaluation was realized by IT experts and portal's users. The axis of diagram (Fig. 2) was named "Functionality" and "Quality level". Functionality includes all technical requirements necessary for the precise portal's behaviour. The second parameter "Quality level" embraces all emotional and affective perception of potential portal's users.

5. THE RECEPTION OF THE IMPROVEMENTS OF THE VHCQC WEB PORTAL

Goal of our study was reception of the improvements for the better user's affective perception. We received 14 improvements for each portal property. The particular improvements are shown in Table 1. This study presents preview part of the Quality Function Deployment of the VHCQC web portal. The Quality Function Deployment is a tool for designing product to user needs by translating what the user wants (Zgodavova et all, 2002).

6. CONCLUSION

The study presents initial Kansei structure which was described by principal steps of VHCQC web portal evaluation. Results of the study have identified semantic space of Kansei words representing human Kansei responses to web portal. The relations of Kansei and web portal designs were also visible.

Further studies will be performed, as to find associations between these Kansei Words and detail web portal designs. This is to achieve the research target which is to formulate guideline that translates human Kansei to web portal design. This paper provides principal methodical level of web portal quality evaluation by way of selected Kansei words. Consideration on the universal and localized Kansei features of the web portal environment will be considered in our other research by using concrete multi-variation statistical methods.

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our acknowledgement goes to Prof. Kristina Zgodavova, PhD. our PhD. study adviser which markedly contributed in development of this paper and to the team of portal designers: Kristina Lengyelova, Lubomir Lengyel and Slavomir Beznak.

8. REFERENCES

Grimsaeth, K. (2005). Kansei Engineering, Linking Emotions and Product Features, Available from: http://www.ivt.ntnu.no/ipd/fag/PD9/2005/artikler/PD9%20 Kansei%20Engineering%20K_Grimsath.pdf Accessed: 2008-07-03

Nagamachi, M. (2007). Perspectives and new trend of Kansei/Affective Engineering, in: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Affective Design and Kansei Engineering, 18-20 June, 2007, Lund University and Linkoping University

Zgodavova, K. et all (2002). The Quality Professional, Technical University in Kosice, ISBN 80-7099-845-8, Kosice (Slovakia)

Zgodavova, K. (2006). Web Portal of Tools, Methods and Case Studies of Quality Management, project of Slovak Ministry of Education KEGA 3-4121-06, 2006

Zgodavova, K. (2006). Improhealth Collaborative SK/06/B/F/PP-177443 Vocational Education and Training for Quality of Life through eHealthcare & Well-Being, Leonardo da Vinci pilot project, 2006

Table 1. The list of the VHCQC web portal's improvements
obtained through Kansei Engineering

THE VHCQC PORTAL'S PROPERTIES AND FUNCTIONS /
THE VHCQC PORTAL'S IMPROVEMENTS

Manageability

l. Search Search tool situated on the main
 page

2. Print Add the tool for direct print

3. Understandability of menu Transformation of menu

4. Difficult discrimination Use colour to distinguish visited
 of un-/visited links and unvisited links

5. Portal lucidity Perform the tree-structure of
 portal

Attractiveness

6. Graphics Use meaningful graphics that
 relate to the contents

7. Colour scheme Better colour variety

8. Images position one dominant image on one page
 only

9. Frames Avoid using too many frames on
 one page

Security

10. Access Permit multi level access

11. Inopportune state for Use of id and user password
authentication and authorization

12. Programming security Provide programming security of
 the highest degree

Readability

13. Blind friendly Add the sound tracks of human
 voice

14. Multilingual readability Multilingual copywriter