Analysing Cognitive Differences between Product Developers and Customers: An exploration with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

摘要

Robotic vacuum cleaners for home use were once perceived to be a winning product because they match technology capabilities developed in industrial robotics with customer needs. Yet, market adoption lags behind earlier projections and customer satisfaction is relatively low. This paper proposes that this relative lack of success is caused by a fundamental mismatch between customer expectations and product developers' understanding of customer needs. To investigate differences in perception, this paper employs Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) modelling. The method is increasingly used in product planning to make planning assumptions explicit, to allow developers to simulate and understand the indirect and far reaching effects of design decisions, and to compare the structure and dynamic behaviour of cognitive maps from different stakeholder groups. In the context of this research two different FCMs were developed and compared: The developer cognitive map was created through literature reviews and an interactive group session of two experienced robotics engineers. The customer cognitive map was developed through analysis of product reviews, interviews with two customers and an interactive group session with five customers. The structure and the dynamic behaviour of each cognitive map were investigated through FCM simulation. The comparison of results show strong differences in the perspectives of both groups: The developers' causal cognitive map contains fewer concepts but more complex relationship between them. Moreover, their perceived drivers of product attractiveness differ from those of customers, which causes engineering trade-off decisions to be resolved in ways that are detrimental to product desirability from the customer perspective. These differences are robust even if different squashing functions are used for FCM simulation. The paper discusses how these findings can be applied for improving early stage product planning.