Mapping User Accessibility Needs Systematically to Universal Design Principles

Other research has established seven UD principles and performance measures for the design and assessment of generic products. The objective of this research is to improve the suitability of UD for flexible packaging. The methodology used here begins by creating customer requirements from UD performance measures and packaging functions from JIS S 0022‐4. The authors propose a correlation matrix to discard uncorrelated, duplicated and irrelevant requirements from the list of requirements. The remaining customer requirements are screened by using the Index of Consistency. Then, experts check and add essential customer requirements. A factor analysis is conducted on the survey data to find the important requirements and eliminate uncorrelated requirements. The number of customer requirements is reduced from 261 to 39 with five principles corresponding to UD. The five principles relevant to UD are (a) convenient, intuitive and simple use; (b) perceptible information; (c) structure and graphic design; (d) easy opening; and (e) equitable use. The benefit of the new five principles is not only the reduction from seven principles to five principles, but also the grouped customer requirements that are easy to use for packaging manufacturers and packaging designers. Customer requirements can be used as performance measures to evaluate the compliance of flexible packaging to UD. Finally, the application of the five principles and 39 customer requirements are demonstrated with case studies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Up to date, workload and worker performance in Small Medium-sized Enterprise (SMEs) was assessed manually. KESAN (Kansei Engineering-based Sensor for Agroindustry) was developed as a tool to assess worker workload and performance. The latest prototype of KESAN was established. As the final step prior to the full-scale mass production, an industrial design was required and must be designed based on the validation to user needs. This research proposed an industrial design for mass production of KESAN using Kano model and Quality Function Deployment (QFD). The user needs was extracted from attributive analysis of Kano model. The matrix of House of Quality (HOQ) was utilized to connect the user needs and technical requirement. The research result validated Thirteen (13) user need attributes. The most important attribute was desktop application as an integrated decision support system. Fourteen (14) technical requirement attributes were identified to fulfil the user needs. Finally, a prototype was developed based on product final specification and prioritized technical requirements.

The rapid development of contemporary artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has given rise to the emerging paradigm of the AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things), which is profoundly impacting human life and driving the digital transformation of industries and society. The AIoT not only enhances product functionality and convenience but also accelerates the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the widespread adoption of these technologies still poses challenges related to social inclusivity, particularly regarding insufficient accessibility for elderly users, which may exacerbate the digital divide and social inequality, contradicting SDG 10 (reducing inequality). This study integrates AIoT product development processes based on sustainability and universal design principles using methods such as Quality Function Deployment, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, the Scenario Method, the Entropy Weight Method, and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation. The features of this process include ease of operation and high flexibility, making it suitable for cross-departmental product development while prioritizing the needs of diverse age groups throughout the development process. The research findings indicate that the AIoT product concepts proposed can meet the needs of diverse users, contributing to the realization of age-friendly products. This study provides a reference point for future AIoT product development, promoting the inclusive and sustainable development of smart technology.

Expansion of world economy brings changes in the way of thinking which can be seen in customers' demands. This directly influences the increase in demands at designing of a new or modifications of the existing products. Quality Function Deployment is a method directed towards revealing customers' wishes, which guarantees that these wishes have a positive effect on the product design and on the development of manufacturing process. Using and interpreting certain surveys of different types in the right way, additional advantages can be achieved in increasing of competitiveness in free markets. The most significant advantage is the possibility of using those specialists' expressions most often used by potential customers. Another problem of market experts and designers is translation from the "language" of customers to the "language" of quality characteristics. This problem is solved by using quality matrixes called the "house of quality" by Japanese. The "house of quality" is very appropriate and clear form of concise presenting of numerous data which refer to quality analysis, planning and decision making. Basically speaking the method of quality function deployment serves to improve customers' satisfaction with the product quality. What can this method contribute in comparison with already achieved results by using traditional methods in quality improvement? In this way the enterprise gets connected with its customers, and within the enterprise itself communication among different departments is improved so the new product has real chances to satisfy demands and needs of the customers. Taking into account that method of quality function deployment uses customers' demands as input data it means that the enterprise understands customers better and their understanding of product quality. Thus, even in the phase of planning, awareness of what should be done is raised in order to increase the degree of customers' satisfaction. Four-stage quality function deployment process in the automotive industry implemented and presented in the paper. A car represents a very complex product. A great number of parts, diversity of applicable materials, numerous and complex technology processes in manufacturing, on the one side, as well as a lot of demands from developed and less developed markets, on the other hand, make car manufacturing very complex in production, economic, and technological sense. Quality Function Deployment method can be used at designing of a new car, but also at solving of some of the existing problems. When carrying out reliability testing we came to the opening of the engine lid during driving the tested car. Taking into account that it was nonconformity which endangers traffic safety, the analysis of the stated problem was carried outimmediately.

According to the aged society in Japan, the expectation is high for the development of the human support robot or devices in daily life and in medical treatment and welfare. The human centered design and the universal design are very important concept for creating the useful human support devices. Human centric and universal designs are the designs of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. This special issue provides current researches and developments of human centric, universal and interactive design for robotics and mechatronics. Also, this special issue covers a broad range of research topics, such as human centric design, universal and interactive design, human machine interaction, transport system, housing environment system, rehabilitation devices, multi modal interface, evaluation of the usability, sensor/actuator technologies for assistive system, robotics and mechatronics to support elderly persons. We thank the authors for their fine contributions and the reviewers for their generous time and effort. In closing, we thank the Editorial Board of the Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics for helping make this issue possible.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a systematic approach that captures customer requirements and translates them, through house of quality (HOQ), into engineering characteristics of product. As the functional relationships between customer requirements and engineering characteristics in QFD are uncertain, unclear and fuzzy, radial basis function (RBF) to determine the functional relationships for QFD is presented, and a QFD functional relationships model based on RBF is proposed. According to RBF neural network can realize the nonlinear mapping space from the input space to the output, and can obtain the optimal relationships pattern of the input and output, the customer requirements and engineering characteristics in QFD constituted the input and output of the RBF neural network respectively, the optimal relationships are constructed through the neural network training. A case study of natural lighting products development is provided to illustrate the application of the presented method.

While Universal Design principles have been adopted in many areas to ensure that products and services are usable for the broadest possible diversity of users, there is still an open area when it comes to the emergency management domain. This article aims at providing a systematic overview of the current state of the emerging research field of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Emergency Management, and to highlight high-impact research opportunities to ensure that the increasing introduction of ICT in Emergency Management can contribute to removing barriers instead of adding more barriers, in particular for the elderly and people with disabilities. A systematic review on relevant literature on Universal Design, ICT and Emergency Management between 2008 and 2020 was employed using predefined frameworks, to answer the following questions: (1) Who are the target audiences (stakeholders) in research on Universal Design of ICT in Emergency Management in the different categories of Emergency Management ICT tools, and to what degree is Human-Centred Design and Universal Design taken into account? (2) What are the most important challenges and gaps in research on Universal Design of ICT in Emergency Management? We identify a set of gaps in the literature, indicating that there are some challenges where Universal Design is still limitedly addressed in technology development. We also derive promising future research topics based on areas that are missing in the literature.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a proven useful methodology in new product development to satisfy customer requirements (CRs). House of quality (HoQ), the general implementing mode of QFD, is aimed to identify the variables of engineering characteristics (ECs) based on the relationships between CRs and ECs. Traditionally, the establishment of these relationships is mainly dependent on the designers' experience and then the HoQ included many items difficult to handle. For aiding the designers on the HoQ analysis, the paper proposes an Apriori-based data mining approach to extract knowledge from historical data. The approach is mainly focused on mining potential useful association rules (including positive and negative rules) that reflect the relationships according to three objectives: support, confidence, and interestingness. For ensuring the availability and conciseness of these extracted rules, the definitions and calculations of rule conflict and redundancy are proposed and processing procedures are also developed to unite or delete unnecessary rules. The reserved rules are clustered in order to facilitate rule management and reuse. Furthermore, a reuse procedure is also developed for new HoQ analysis. Computational experiments of an electrically powered bicycle are used to illustrate the proposed approach and its capability of extracting useful knowledge.

The roof matrix represents correlations among engineering characteristics (EC) in the house of quality (HoQ) in Quality Functions Deployment (QFD). Correlations are usually measured qualitatively and omitted in the analysis. However, ignoring them may cause duplication of effort, decreased product performance, and unsatisfied customer requirements (CR). Hence, this paper intends to propose an approach to considering the correlations quantitatively. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) were used for this purpose. Additionally, Axiomatic Design (AD), for examining relationships between CRs and ECs, and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) with the Extent Analysis (EA) were used for checking the consistency of the evaluations. The proposed approach was applied in a sheet metal die making company for ranking CRs and ECs. Results show that FCM enables analyzing the quantitative roof matrix practically. The square roof matrix that also supports FCM’s adjacency matrix structure successfully represents asymmetric relationships among ECs. Integrating the correlations into the analysis resulted in a change in the final ranking. It also helped to determine the most manageable ECs, better satisfiable CRs, and most critical/least manageable ECs.

In this paper, an approach combining the Kano model and quality function deployment (QFD) is proposed to meet customer requirements in product design. The Kano model provides an effective way to categorizing customer requirements and helps understand the nature of these requirements. The Kano model categories the customer satisfaction into three fields, namely, must be, attractive and exciting. QFD is a customer-focused product design method. It can transfer customer requirements to products' engineering characteristics. By combining the two methods, we can provide a new way to optimize the product design. The proposed methods can be useful to both practitioners and researchers.

This article discusses the design of data collection instruments that include the opinions of blind students, in accordance with the principles of Universal Design (UD). The aim of this study is to understand the importance of adapting data collection instruments for the inclusion of disabled persons in field research in Architecture and Design, among other fields. The data collection instruments developed were a play interview with a tactile map and a 3D survey with the use of tactile models. These instruments sought to assess the school environment experienced by blind students. The study involved students from the early years of a school for the blind who had not yet mastered the Braille system. The participation of these students was evaluated. A multidisciplinary team consisting of architects, designers, educators, and psychologists lent support to the study. The results showed that the data collection instruments adapted to blind students were successful in making the group of authors examine questions regarding UD. An analysis of the participatory phase showed that the limitations resulting from blindness determine the specificities in the adaptation and implementation process of the instruments in schools. Practical recommendations for future studies related to instruments in the UD thematic are presented. This approach is in line with the global trend of including disabled persons in society based on these users’ opinions concerning what was designed by architects and designers.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is becoming a widely used customer-driven approach and tool in product design. The inherent fuzziness in QFD modelling makes fuzzy regression more appealing than classical statistical tools. A new fuzzy regression-based mathematical programming approach for QFD product planning is presented. First, fuzzy regression theories with symmetric and non-symmetric triangular fuzzy coefficients are discussed to identify the relational functions between engineering characteristics and customer requirements and among engineering characteristics. By embedding the relational functions obtained by fuzzy regression, a mathematical programming model is developed to determine targets of engineering characteristics, taking into consideration the fuzziness, financial factors and customer expectations among the competitors in product development process. The proposed modelling approach can help design team assess relational functions in QFD effectively and reconcile tradeoffs among the various degree of customer satisfaction and determine a set of the level of attainment of engineering characteristics for the new/improved product towards a higher customer expectation within design budget. The comparison results under symmetric and non-symmetric cases and the simulation analysis are made when the approach is applied to a quality improvement problem for an emulsification dynamite packing machine.

In the field of interior design, creating inclusive and engaging spaces is crucial. Universal Design (UD) and multisensory are supportive approaches that can work together to achieve this, however there is a lack of studies on the importance of universal design within the Malaysian interior design industry and its relationship with multisensory in buildings. UD emphasizes building environments that are practical and accessible to everyone, while multisensory highlights the significance of engaging all senses according to the principles of sensory design. Hence, the impact of multisensory on universal design in creating inclusive and accessible interior design will be discussed in this research. While compassionate design practices mediate the relationship between the principles of universal design and the principles of sensory design, this study has two objectives: To identify the necessity of implementing universal design in different types of buildings; and, to investigate the interaction between multisensory and universal design to promote compassionate design practices. Data was gathered through questionnaires given to people in the built environment industry. It is expected that different types of buildings have varying priorities for sensory aspects, and the integration of UD and multisensory design is both important and impactful.

Quality is the ability of a product to meet or exceed customer expectations. Quality function deployment is a product development process based on the notion of House of Quality (HOQ). HOQ is a design approach to translate customer’s expectations into engineering characteristics so that the customer’s expectations can be met. The reduction of variability in important quality characteristics leads to better product quality. Taguchi method focuses on the variability of important quality characteristics. Two key concepts or techniques with the Taguchi method are quality loss and robust design by experimental optimization. This chapter introduces all these design techniques for quality, including the model-based optimum method.

IT systems consist on very many components and very complex, so the implementation of the security countermeasures needs more critical considerations. Indeed, IT systems contain many subsystems, and most of subsystems consist of one or more IT products. In this hierarchy structure, the security characteristics of each IT product may affect the total assurance of the IT systems. Therefore, the security should be considered at the base level of the IT systems, in other words, IT product the base of the IT systems. For this work, this paper presents our research results about the security and assurance relationship between IT products and IT systems.