Testing Subjective Bias in the Analysis of the Customer Needs
Abstract
Collecting and grouping customer needs and constraints by similarity are essential steps in market-driven product development. This paper introduces an overall procedure to collect and structure customer needs and constraints with the emphasis on grouping customer needs by similarity. In particular, this paper applies a statistical methodology (Subjective Clustering) to test for an indication that a few participants' opinions (information) dominate the others' when grouping customer needs using the consensus-based method (Affinity Diagram). Biased use of participants' information may lead to clusters inaccurately representing customer needs, which this paper defines as "subjective bias." Using both Affinity Diagram and Subjective Clustering, one can test and correct the subjective bias while maintaining strong buy-in of the clusters by the participants.
Recommended Citation
S. Takai and K. Ishii, "Testing Subjective Bias in the Analysis of the Customer Needs," Proceedings of 2004 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Jan 2004.
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Affinity Diagram; Constraints; Customer Needs; Hierarchical Clustering; Subjective Clustering
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2004 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2004
