Study on Sensitivity Knowledge for Quantitative Evaluation Method to the Car Exterior Design

Abstract

In recent years, the manufacturing industry has seen a shift of the domain of competition from “performance” which can easily be expressed numerically to “design” which is hard to be expressed numerically. The rise of companies that focus on design, such as Apple, Samsung and IKEA, is remarkable. However, design presents two challenges for the manufacturing industry. The first one is sensory. It is very difficult to quantitatively evaluate, and unified evaluation indicators are not yet defined. The second one is confidentiality of product design. Design is in the position of top secret in companies, so large customer survey has high hurdles. The above two problems increase the influence of the evaluator’s experience and cause a situation that it is difficult to truly create a design desired by the customer. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to quantitatively and confidentially and inexpensively enable the evaluation of the sensitivity for automobile exterior design from the accumulated design and customer’s voice without surveying of target products.