A couple of weeks ago I had a great discussion with one of my colleagues about the Kano model and how we could use it to make better deliveries. The model itself is a classification of features of a product based on customer needs and attributes. It was created by Professor Noriaki Kano (on the right) in the 1980s. Professor Kano defined three different feature categories: basic, performance and excitement, which are represented on the diagram below. The x-axis defines the effort put into the execution/implementation of a feature, and the y-axis defines the customer’s satisfaction after receiving the feature. In the software industry poor execution can result in a faulty or unusable product.
The presence of the features belonging to the basic category which presence has no positive effect on the customer’s satisfaction – bottom right corner -, but they are must have features, so their absence or poor quality causes huge dissatisfaction – bottom left corner. Let’s say we are about to create a web shop. It is a must have feature to make it possible for a customer to sign up to the site. Even if it’s the most sophisticated sign up feature, for the users, it is just a sign up feature, but without it or with a faulty one, they cannot use the site, so they’ll leave.
Satisfaction in the features categorized as performance is proportional to the quality in which the features are implemented/delivered. Let’s say we introduce Facebook as an alternative sign up procedure. It isn’t a must have feature, but it will increase the customers’ satisfaction in the project: the users can use their existing accounts, and we don’t have to store user data unnecessarily. After Facebook we introduce twitter as the next alternative. It has no effect on the existing users but may attract more customers.
The last category is the excitement which is the complete opposite of the basic category: the presence of an excitement feature drastically increases the customers’ satisfaction, but nothing happens when it is not there or doesn’t work as expected. For example, we introduce a feature which allows customers to use our shop without signing up, just using their email address and PayPal. If it’s available, the users will be excited to use this great convenience feature, if it’s not, they won’t miss it
