A customer-oriented decision-making procedure for the design of electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens cameras

Abstract

The changes of living society and progress of electronic technology have made consumer requirements become variable and marketed products much competitive. The trend of product design has also changed to design for mass customization. The design for mass customization is based on different design suits for different customer requirements. To enhance the effectiveness of customized product design, the research develops an efficient way on identifying potential customer preference and requirements at the conceptual stage of product design. The development procedure integrated techniques including morphological analysis and back-propagation neural network so that the system can closely match consumer requirements. An electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens (EVIL) camera is chosen as a case to explore the feasibility of the research. The results will assist the designer to build a customized product form design that can identify product parameters based on particular consumer preference and convert customer requirements into quantifiable data of product form. © Springer-Verlag London 2013.