Age of Subjective Engineering - Emotional Engineering - page 3

be achieved straightforwardly, if the goal is to develop a new product or to maintain
a product, but when it comes to repair, we have to take our customers' satisfaction
into consideration. To what extent and to what level they would like their products
repaired depend largely upon customers' ways of living and their senses of satis-
faction. In this sense, healthcare and engineering are basically the same. Both have
to consider emotions of their customers (patients).
In QOL evaluation, objective or economic satisfaction has been the measure up
to now. But diversifying lifestyles necessitated the introduction of subjective
measures such as SWB. Currently a subjective measure focusing on the present
situation is widely used. If a person feels satis ! ed with today's life, then SWB is
considered high.
Although this is called subjective, it is not completely subjective in a true sense.
People can compare their QOLs with those of others easily and they feel happy or not
based on such comparison. If your friend buys another product that works better than
yours, you would feel dissatis ! ed, although you chose to buy the product you like.
The current engineering response to diversi ! cation is quasi-subjective. We
increase the varieties of products to respond to the diversifying customer require-
ments. This is because customer satisfaction is considered only at a speci ! c time,
i.e., at the time of delivery. So the current engineering framework is not different
from the traditional one. The change we achieved is that we can produce wider
variety of products with the progress of technology in shorter time. The funda-
mental idea remains the same. So although the producer emphasized the importance
of customer satisfaction, it is none other than how they can change their product
better in their way of production and it does not come from the true observation of
what customers really want. Thus, today's engineering satis ! es customer wants just
for today. So customers are happy today. But how will they be tomorrow?
Interestingly enough, in psychology, there is a new measure coming up. It is
Expectation Satisfaction. People feel happy when their expectations are satis ! ed.
This is very much different from the current discussion of customer satisfaction.
Today's discussion is how customers feel satis ! ed today. This only considers
customers past histories; their memories and experiences. How they spent their life
and how their ways of living has been. In short, current production is based on the
past.
But in QOL, it was found that people's evaluation of QOL varies largely with
expectations. It is known that GDP and QOL are closely related. Although GDP
does not seem to be subjective, it changes by people's expectations. If people
expect better life tomorrow, they will spend more and GDP will go up. And when
people feel their expectations are met, they feel happier. So Expectation Satisfaction
is getting attention these days. The amount of satisfaction changes with how much
expectation is achieved. This evaluation is completely subjective. Expectations vary
from person to person and it not only depends on the past, but it also depends on
how a person looks into the future.
Biologists tell us that the human is the only one species that can see the future.
Some animals can use tools, but they cannot see the future (At least that is
what biologists tell us.). Animals live for now, while humans live for the future.