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In-Depth Information
Human-Product Communication
Shuichi Fukuda
Abstract Communication between humans and products is increasing its
importance. The environments and situations change very frequently and exten-
sively and engineers cannot foresee the operating conditions anymore. Only users
on site can understand what are happening now. Thus, machines or products that
communicate with the user and provide the necessary information for them to judge
and to make adequate decisions are called for. Such communicating machines or
products will also satisfy customers much more because they will learn through
communication what the user is expecting and they can feed it back to the producer.
Users' expectations vary from user to user because their lifestyles are different. This
is why today's customer requirements are so diversi ! ed. To cope with todays'
diversi ! ed requirements, engineers have to know how the machine or the product is
being used. Therefore, without such feedbacks, engineers cannot do anything. In
other words, yesterday's engineering is an open-loop system, but today we have to
change it to a closed-loop system. Therefore, communicating machines or products
are now our necessity of life.
1 Introduction
It is pointed out in Chap. “ Age of Subjective Engineering ” that engineering is
moving from the traditional objective way toward subjective and individual-oriented
direction. And instead of the current way of satisfying today's customer wants, how
we can satisfy customer expectations becomes more important. In other words, the
traditional engineering is based on the past, but the engineering tomorrow should
really look into the future and take into account what people expect from engineers
and to consider how we can satisfy these expectations. These expectations are
S. Fukuda ( & )
System Design and Management, Keio University, 4-4-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku,
Yokohama 223-8526, Japan
e-mail: shufukuda@gmail.com
 
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