UIEtips: Understanding the Kano Model – A Tool for Sophisticated Designers

In today’s UIEtips, I look back on an article from January 2011 – Understanding the Kano Model – A Tool for Sophisticated Designers. In this article, I explain how the Kano Model predicts the reaction of users from initial delight and why the delight fades over time. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

When blogging first started, a blog author needed to know basic HTML to do anything fancy with their formatting. Many blogs were absent of any style – just simple words on the page.

The first blogging systems added basic formatting features, like bold and italics, to their text input fields. These features would give a small word-processing feel to an otherwise bland input tool. Users were delighted.

The designers took the hint. They started adding more word processing-like features. We saw bullets, justification, image insertion, and fancy link capabilities. Each feature took more investment and returned more satisfaction.

We’ve all seen instances like this. By adding new features or cleaning up the quality of the product, we generate more shouts of delight from a thankful audience. This is the Performance Payoff, the most visible force of the Kano Model.

Read the article, Understanding the Kano Model – A Tool for Sophisticated Designers.

Learn to use the Kano Model to Build a Winning UX Strategy

Join Jared Spool at our next UIE Virtual Seminar on October 25. Jared will talk about how your competitors, existing design debt, and the evolution of ideas from innovation to market maturity all affect how you need to design today. Read more about this seminar.