Age of Subjective Engineering - Emotional Engineering - page 4

The current response to diversi ! cation is in a sense regarding us as animals. Ani-
mals can make selections from nature, but they cannot make any tools for tomor-
row. The current engineering provides us with many choices so we may be able to
choose what we want, but we are not expected to dream for the future.
The new measure of QOL is totally different from the past measures or the past
way of thinking. It is to regard us as humans and de ! ne QOL from that standpoint.
In fact, we feel very happy and are ! filled with the sense of ful ! llment when our
goals are achieved. This is totally subjective.
Although producers and users came to be divided since the Industrial Revolu-
tion, such Expectation Satisfaction was realized in the early days of engineering.
New inventions after new inventions followed and people can enjoy witnessing
how their expectations or their dreams are being achieved.
Even after such period of successive new basic inventions, people still could
enjoy how their expectations could be realized about new functions or quality
improvements. So until the very late twentieth century, what engineering provided
us is nothing other than satisfying our expectations for such technological devel-
opments. Even if the product might fail short from our expectations, we could
expect improvement for tomorrow. Rather, such failures served to stimulate cus-
tomer expectations and they could enjoy more than just receiving what they expect.
The products were important for customers, of course, but more importantly they
enjoyed the process of how their expectations were being realized.
But since the very late twentieth century, most functions customers need and
expect have been provided and as Weber Fechner [ 2 ] points out the more quality is
improved, the more dif ! cult it become for customers to realize its improvement.
Thus, adding new functions or quality improvement no more satis ! es customers.
On the contrary, addition of too many new functions in very short time more
often than not irritated customers. They do not have time to master how to use
them. So they feel uneasy when they use them. Customers put trust in products,
when they feel con ! dent in using it. Thus, it needs time for customers to learn how
to use products and when products work as they expect, they feel con ! dent. But if
they do not have enough time to learn and master how to use them and products do
not work as they expect, they feel very much irritated.
Such contradiction occurred because producers only focus on one time value or
how they can satisfy their customers with the functions of their ! final products.
Interestingly enough, such subjective or individual evaluation as described next
is being introduced in psychometrics.
2 Subjective or Individual Evaluation in Psychometrics
In the ! field of psychometrics, Item Response Theory (IRT), also known as Latent
Trait Theory is getting wide attention these days. Traditionally, achievements were
evaluated using the theory known as Classical Test Theory, where focus was put on
absolute scores and no attention was paid to latent trait or room for growth.