The Kano Model

Designing new products can be really exciting. Whether you’re working on your own or as a team, you likely have all kinds of ideas to include in the design. Before long, you end up with a lengthy list of features that all sound super cool. But you’re not sure where to start. Can you even fit all these features into your product? Do your customers want these features at all?

Using the Kano model, you can find answers to these questions. The Kano model is a framework used to prioritize design features based on customers' emotional responses. Using a Kano questionnaire, the model analyzes customer responses and categorizes features according to their potential to satisfy customers. For example, features that end up in the “must-be” category are those that customers expect, while features in the “indifferent” category have little impact on customer satisfaction (more on this later). Unlike other feature prioritization methods, such as comparing benefits and costs, the Kano model focuses on how customers feel about each feature.

This is extremely useful in user experience (UX) design. After all, UX design aims to delight customers by meeting and exceeding their expectations. Products need to be people-focused to keep customers coming back for more, and using the Kano model can give these products the best chance at success. In particular, designers can build a competitive customer experience by providing features customers expect, adding a few unexpected but exciting features, and reducing the number of features that customers don’t like.

This all may sound obvious, but the benefit of the Kano model is learning what customers really want from UX design rather than making assumptions about their needs and goals.