J Intell Manuf
DOI 10.1007/s10845-016-1280-4
Application of combined Kano model and interactive genetic
algorithm for product customization
Runliang Dou1 · Yubo Zhang1 · Guofang Nan1
Received: 24 August 2016 / Accepted: 12 November 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Interactive genetic algorithms (IGAs) have been
applied in industrial design to quickly respond to customers’
personalized demand and to achieve customization. How-
ever, unreasonable recognition and improper configuration
of customization attributes may increase the design com-
plexity, impair efficiency and lead to user fatigue. In this
paper, a combined Kano model and IGA approach is pro-
posed for more effective product customization to conduct
customer-driven product design by fully considering their
individual preferences and simultaneously enhancing effec-
tive user involvement. The approach uses the Kano model to
recognize different customization attributes and rank them in
order of their influence on customer satisfaction. The model
then dynamically adjusts these attributes for customization in
the IGA-based product design process to more quickly find a
satisfying design scheme without leading to user fatigue. A
computer-aided design system prototype is developed in the
context of the customized design of tablet PCs to prove the
maneuverability and effectiveness of the proposed approach.
The experimental results demonstrate that the approach could
improve customization efficiency to a large extent and fully
relieve user fatigue by expediting the process of finding sat-
isfying design individuals for customers.
Keywords Product customization · Interactive genetic
algorithm · Kano model · User fatigue
B Guofang Nan
gfnan@tju.edu.cn
Runliang Dou
drl@tju.edu.cn
Yubo Zhang
yubozhang@tju.edu.cn
1 College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, People’s Republic of China
Introduction
With the increasing consumption level and aesthetic concept,
consumption demand has become more and more personal-
ized and pluralistic rather than being limited to the functional
realization of products (Maruca 2000; Wang et al. 2014a). As
an effective method to meet individual personalized demand,
the design pattern of product customization has attracted
attention from manufacturers and has been widely promoted
and applied in the field of industrial design (Åhlström and
Westbrook 1999; Zhang and Wang 2016; Wang et al. 2016b).
In the product customization process, the customer-oriented
strategy is used to generate corresponding product design
schemes according to different customer preferences (Dahl
et al. 2015). In addition to increasing the flexibility of prod-
uct design, the strategy can fully meet customers’ demand
for individuation (Helo et al. 2010; Wang et al. 2016b,
2014b). However, compared with the traditional mass pro-
duction mode, adopting a customization strategy generally
requires manufacturers to expend more production resources.
To help manufacturers significantly reduce their additional
investment of human and material resources and to make
mass customization possible, computer-aided design tools
integrating intelligent computing approaches and customer
involvement mechanism are presented to rapidly meet cus-
tomers’ product customization demands (Lee and Chang
2010); of these approaches, interactive evolutionary com-
putation (IEC), as exemplified by the interactive genetic
algorithm (IGA), has obvious advantages (Kowaliw et al.
2012).
For product customization integrating IGA, user fatigue
is one of the issues that needs to be considered because of
its interactive mechanism (Takagi 2001). Some studies have
been carried out from the perspective of enhancing algo-
rithm efficiency (Gong et al. 2005), supplementing design
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guidelines (Rodriguez et al. 2011) and improving interac-
tion (Yannou et al. 2013) to void or mitigate user fatigue
by reducing the numbers of population generations, stream-
lining operation, and shortening operation time. Although
these methods are workable, they ignore the complexity of
the product design problem itself so that their effectiveness is
limited when the number of product attributes for customiza-
tion is quite large and the range of possible attribute values
is very wide. One relatively effective solution is to solve the
issue from the product point of view by improving popula-
tion evolution efficiency through effective recognition and
reasonable configuration of customizable product attributes,
which can optimize product customization and thus mitigate
user fatigue. However, there is limited current research that
integrates this optimization strategy into IGA-based product
customization (Yang 2011). When the number of attributes
for customization is too small, the personalized needs of
customers cannot be fully satisfied. When the number of
attributes for customization is too large, it may cause choice
disorders and lead to user fatigue. In addition, providing cus-
tomers with customizable product attributes that they do not
care about is a waste of manufacturers’ production resources.
Therefore, it is particularly important to reasonably config-
ure customizable product attributes, and the Kano model can
help to solve this issue.
Kano introduced Herzberg’s two factor theory into prod-
uct quality management to build a Kano model for evaluating
the degree of product satisfaction (Kano et al. 1984). Instead
of thinking that “satisfaction” and “dissatisfaction” have only
a simple antagonistic relationship, the Kano model states that
removing satisfying factors does not always lead to customer
dissatisfaction, and similarly, removing unsatisfying factors
cannot guarantee customer satisfaction. Studies have verified
that adopting the Kano model is an effective means to guide
product attribute configuration (Violante and Vezzetti 2014).
Currently, most studies apply the Kano model to explore
the influence of product attribute combinations on customer
satisfaction. However, they ignore the suitability of customiz-
able product attributes and the ability of these attributes to
affect customer satisfaction (Matzler and Hinterhuber 1998).
In other words, these studies highlight the result of product
customization when the Kano model is applied, despise the
model’s ability to guide a customization process that is con-
nected with customer satisfaction. Therefore, in this paper, a
customizable attribute recognition strategy is developed by
applying the Kano model and then integrating the model into
an IGA-based product design process to help customers find
their satisfactory design individuals quickly by dynamically
adjusting attributes for customization.
Compared with previous studies, three major contribu-
tions are presented in this paper. First, this paper combines
the Kano model with IGA in product customization, which
improves the IGA-based product design process from the
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perspective of recognizing customizable product attributes
and optimizing their configuration. Second, with the help of
the Kano model, the product attributes are ranked, which
guides the product customization process. Third, by intro-
ducing the recognition and dynamic adjusting mechanism
of customizable attributes into the IGA process, user fatigue,
which may arise during the design process, can be effectively
mitigated. In summary, this paper combines the advantages
of both Kano model and IGA for product customization, and
improves customization efficiency to a large degree without
leading to user fatigue.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. “Lit-
erature review” section reviews the research background
from the aspects of product customization, IGA and Kano
model respectively. “Kano analysis of customizable product
attributes” section introduces the process to recognize cus-
tomizable product attributes and explains how to categorize
these attributes according to the Kano analysis results. “IGA-
based product design integrating a customizable attribute
recognition strategy” section proposes an IGA-based product
customization method under a customizable product recog-
nition strategy, presents a concrete approach framework, and
provides the details. In “ Case study” section, the method is
verified in a concrete case study for tablet PC design. Finally,
“Conclusion” section provides a conclusion and discusses the
limitations of the method as well as research directions for
in-depth studies in the future.
Literature review
This section reviews the literature covering three aspects:
product customization, the interactive genetic algorithm and
the Kano model.
Product customization
Product customization, as a type of customer-oriented ser-
vice, aims to fully meet customers’ requirements, satisfying
their special preferences for products, and providing them
with personalized design schemes. It is the key link for cap-
turing customers’ preferences and recognizing the possible
factors influencing customer satisfaction in a product cus-
tomization process (Hinckeldeyn et al. 2014; Thirumalai and
Sinha 2011). Toward this end, Du et al. (2005) developed a
quality utility analysis related to product customization to
help manufacturers better understand customer preference
and customer-perceived value. Park et al. (2013) used differ-
ent models, including a simple linear model and an S-shaped
value model, to build product user experience quantifica-
tion models, which integrate many user experience factors
into a single index. Using data mining, Li et al. (2013)
analyzed possible tablet computer attributes that customers
J Intell Manuf
want to customize. However, the aforementioned studies
usually regard customer satisfaction analysis and product
customization as two relatively independent aspects that are
implemented in the order of priority. They lack flexibility
to dynamically meet customers’ requirements and increase
their satisfaction during the product design process. One the
one hand, a utility analysis or quantification model can indi-
rectly capture customer preferences, and they have difficultly
responding to customers’ requirements quickly on the level
of individuals. On the other hand, the data mining approach is
strict with the quality and scale of the data set, and it may not
be compatible with the products that have not accumulated
enough user data.
From the perspective of manufacturer strategy, some
studies also specialized in product customization issues by
capturing the influence of the product customization strategy
on customer satisfaction at the macroscopic level. Bernhardt
et al. (2007) used a duopoly model of horizontal prod-
uct differentiation to discuss what prerequisites are suitable
for companies to adopt as a product customization strat-
egy. Cavusoglu et al. (2007) explored whether a company
should adopt a product customization strategy; assuming
that customization is a good choice, they also studied if
a company should adopt a mass customization strategy, a
targeted mass customization strategy or a product prolif-
eration strategy. Smith et al. (2012) revealed the value of
mass customization from the perspective of product lifecy-
cle. These studies, which are mainly manufacturer-oriented,
can help manufacturers decide whether to adopt product cus-
tomization on the level of strategy. However, it is difficult for
them to provide manufacturers with detailed guidance for
the actual customization process, especially the processes
that directly involve customers. One success of product cus-
tomization is to bring customers, as an important factor, into
the design process. From the participants’ point of view,
Petiot and Dagher (2010) proposed a customer preference–
oriented product design method and applied it to car headlight
design. From the perspective of the interaction mode, the
value and advantage of product customization are verified in
the customization system based on computer techniques and
the Internet (Yang et al. 2005). Some innovative techniques
such as virtual reality regard customer involvement as an
important factor and integrate it into product design process.
These techniques have even been put into practice, and their
feasibility has obtained public approbation (Choi et al. 2015).
However, whether adopting a new interaction mode or inno-
vative techniques in product customization, cost control is
the necessary factor.
When adopting a product customization strategy, the pre-
requisite for manufacturers to create a higher profit is to
effectively control their cost. Therefore, to balance between
design scheme personalization and limited production capa-
bility, IGA is integrated into a computer-aided design system
with direct customer involvement. Through a friendly graph-
ical user interface, users can effectively interact with the
computer system to improve customization efficiency and
realize mass customization, while meeting their personalized
preferences.
Interactive genetic algorithm (IGA)
Originating from genetics and the theory of evolution, the
genetic algorithm was first proposed by University of Michi-
gan professor Holland in the 1970s (Holland 1973). As a
type of global stochastic search algorithm, GA uses chro-
mosome individuals to represent the solution to a specific
problem by simulating gene behavior and evolution mech-
anisms. It searches for a satisfying solution to the problem
by iteratively improving individual fitness in the population
through a series of genetic operations, such as selection,
crossover and mutation. With the benefits of this type of
problem solving mechanism, GA is suitable for solving com-
plex and non-linear optimization problems that are difficult
for the traditional methods to solve; GA is not limited by
problem background (Goldberg and Holland 1988; Wang
et al. 2010). GA has been widely applied in combinatorial
optimization, machine learning and many other fields (Wang
et al. 2016a). For solving the product design problem, GA
covers a wide range of fields such as industrial product design
and art design (Renner and Ekárt 2003; Fu et al. 2016). For
instance, Hsiao et al. (2010) practiced computer-aided coffee
maker form design by applying GA combined with morpho-
logical analysis theory, quantification theory type I and the
analytical hierarchy process (AHP).
One limitation of using GA to solve product design opti-
mization problems is that one design scheme is difficult to
evaluate with a given fitness function because there is huge
difference in different customers’ preferences for design
schemes (Kim and Cho 2000). To this end, interactive genetic
algorithm (IGA) was proposed; IGA’s interaction mechanism
can make up for this limitation. Instead of being calculated
through a specific function, in IGA, the fitness of an indi-
vidual is directly decided by the customer’s own preference,
which differs from GA. Customers can confer a higher fitness
on a design scheme individual he likes or directly select the
individual he is satisfied with as a parent individual of the next
generation during population evolution. The process empha-
sizes customers’ participation and subjectivity in product
design, which makes customers feel as though they designed
the product themselves (Franke et al. 2010). With the help of
IGA, non-professional customers with only limited product
design knowledge can join in the professional design process
and quickly scheme out satisfying solutions to meet their
own preferences. Most research uses IGA to solve specific
application-oriented problems. For example, Cho 2002 pre-
sented two IGA-based system instances to solve the problems
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of fashion design and image retrieval respectively. As cus-
tomers directly participate in the IGA process, user fatigue
needs to be considered. To this end, some studies relieve user
fatigue by proposing new IGA-based approaches or improv-
ing the original design process based on IGA. To improve the
design process, Gong et al. (2009) assigned individual fitness
according to customers’ sensitivity to a design scheme rather
than asking customer to evaluate a design scheme and directly
give corresponding individual fitness. Dou and Zong (2014)
proposed an IGA based on hesitancy degree and verified its
effectiveness through a case study of car console design.
Moreover, from the perspective of improving interaction
mode, hyper-interactive evolutionary computation (HIEC),
which was proposed by Bush and Sayama (2011) to further
enhance customer enthusiasm and initiative in interaction,
relieves user fatigue by increasing immersion. However, the
interaction modes adopted by the abovementioned studies are
still complicated and tedious for non-professional customers
because these modes usually need customers’ interactional
operation multiple times in every round of evaluation.
In fact, customizable product attribute configuration is
also an important factor for influencing user fatigue. Cur-
rently, although some studies have proposed customizable
product attribute configurations in practice, few of them try
to improve the IGA-based product design process based on
this idea. Therefore, this paper uses the Kano model to ana-
lyze customizable product attributes and helps customers find
their satisfactory design schemes more quickly by dynami-
cally adjusting the activating states for customization of these
attributes in the IGA-based design process.
Kano model
The Kano model was first proposed by Kano, an expert on
quality management in Japan. The model, which is used for
customer-oriented product or service improvement, believes
that “satisfying” is not simply in opposition to “dissatisfying”
and that product attribute fulfillment can influence customer
satisfaction in a nonlinear way (Berger et al. 1993). With
the Kano model, decision makers can understand whether
fulfilling some product attributes will influence customer sat-
isfaction and how great the influence is. The Kano model
studies different influences that different types of product
attributes may have on customer satisfaction and classifies
these attributes into three main categories, which are “attrac-
tive,” “One-dimensional,” and “must-be.”
The Kano model has been widely applied in all fields
to improve production quality, increase service level, and
enhance customer satisfaction (Luor et al. 2015). Chen and
Chuang (2008) proposed a robust and effective product
design approach and applied the approach in mobile phone
design; Llinares and Page (2011) combined the Kano model
with Kansei engineering to evaluate customer preferences
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in housing design. To overcome disadvantages of the tra-
ditional model, some improved Kano models have been
proposed one after another. Xu et al. (2009) proposed an
analytical Kano model to enhance the ability of analyzing
customers’ requirements, which could effectively balance
customer satisfaction and manufacturers’ ability to meet
this satisfaction. To solve the issue of the traditional model
having difficulty finding attractive qualities for unreason-
able questionnaire design, Chen et al. (2010) proposed a
creativity-based Kano model, which integrated TRIZ (an
acronym for the Russian word “teary resheniya izobretatel-
skikh zadatch,” which means “theory of inventive problem
solving”) and SCAMPER (an acronym for “substitute, com-
bine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse”)
theories.
Above all, the feasibility and effectiveness of using the
Kano model to enhance customer satisfaction have been
widely verified. However, most studies on the Kano model
are from the perspective of guiding or improving product
design, and few of them focus on applying the Kano model
as a tool in the product customization process, especially
the process that directly involve customers. Consequently,
this paper aims to integrate the analytical results of the Kano
model into product design with strong customer involvement
to achieve real customer-driven customization.
Kano analysis of customizable product attributes
A Kano model is shown in Fig. 1 The model mainly classifies
product attributes that influence customer satisfaction into
three different categories, which are attractive qualities, one-
dimensional qualities, and must-be qualities respectively. In
some abnormal situations, reverse qualities, indifferent quali-
ties and questionable results are also considered as categories
(Kano et al. 1984).
Consequently, the Kano model is used to analyze product
attributes for customers’ requirements mainly in six different
situations:
A: Attractive Customer satisfaction will not decrease even
if requirements in this category are not fulfilled. However,
fulfilling these requirements will drastically increase cus-
tomer satisfaction.
O: One-dimensional Fulfilling requirements in this cate-
gory increases customer satisfaction. Conversely, not fulfill-
ing these requirements decreases customer satisfaction.
M: Must-be Customer satisfaction will not increase even
if requirements in this category are fulfilled. However, not
fulfilling these requirements drastically decreases customer
satisfaction.
R: Reverse Fulfilling requirements in this category
decreases customer satisfaction as customers have no such
requirements.
J Intell Manuf

Table 1 Kano evaluation table

Product attribute Without fulfillment
Like Must-be Neutral Live with Dislike

Fulfillment
Like Q A A A O
Must-be R I I I M
Neutral R I I I M
Live with R I I I M
Dislike R R R R Q

2. How would you feel if you could not customize the screen
size of your tablet PC? Like; Must-be; Neutral; Live with;
Dislike.
Fig. 1 Kano model
Then, product attributes can be classified into different cate-
gories according to Table  1. 
I: Indifferent Customer satisfaction will not change regard-
We define F = f 1 , f 2 , . . . , f i , . . . , f q as the prod-
less of whether requirements in this category are fulfilled.
Q: Questionable result Requirements in this category
uct
 attribute set, which  has q product attributes, and E =
e1 , e2 , . . . , e j , . . . e p as a respondent set containing p
should be ignored because there is paradox when explain-
respondents. Then, for each attribute, we have:
ing them.
The Kano model can fully analyze customizable product  
attributes and then decide whether to fulfill these attributes in e j→i = a + j→i , a −
j→i i = 1, 2, . . . , q; j = 1, 2, . . . , p

a customization process by ranking their priority level for ful- a+ −
j→i , a j→i ∈

Like ,  Must-be ,  Neutral  , 
filment. Typically, the model believes that M > O > A > 
I ; therefore, to ensure that customer satisfaction does not Live with ,  Dislike
decrease, those attributes that are able to drastically increase
customer satisfaction should be preferentially fulfilled for of which a + −
j→i and a j→i are the answers to the positive ques-
customization to achieve a balance between manufacturabil- tion and negative question, respectively.
ity and customer satisfaction. Now, we define transformation rules K , which are embod-
To apply the Kano model, a questionnaire about customiz- ied by Table 1, and frequency index Ci (k). Then:
able product attributes should be designed first; typically, its

effectiveness is verified using Cronbach’s α coefficient. The count K e j→i ≡ 1

coefficient is used as an estimate of questionnaire reliability. 
p

Suppose that questionnaire results are a quantity that is the Ci (k) = count K e j→i
sum of K items: X = Y1 + Y2 + · · · + Y K ; then, Cronbach’s j=1, K (e j→i ) = k

α coefficient is defined as:
K ( f i ) ∈ k|Ci (k) = max C (k)
 K  ∀k
K i=1 σYi
2

α= 1−
K −1 σ X2
where σ X2 is the variance of the observed total test scores and
σY2i is the variance of item i for the current sample of persons.
For each attribute to be investigated, the questionnaire
contains one positive question and one negative question.
For example, when investigating the screen size of a tablet
PC, the questions are as follows:
1. How would you feel if you could customize the screen size
of your tablet PC? Like; Must-be; Neutral; Live with;
Dislike.
K e j→i , k, k ∈ {A, O, M, I, R, Q}
of which K ( f i ) is the Kano classification of f i .
The response frequency corresponding to the same classi-
fication will be added. For each attribute, the category of the
highest response frequency obtained from the questionnaire
is the one that the attribute should be classified into.
The priority level for fulfilment of the attributes clas-
sified into the same category is decided by calculating a
better-worse value. A better value is usually positive, which
means that if one certain attribute is fulfilled, customer sat-
isfaction will increase. The larger the positive value is, the
stronger the effect of increasing customer satisfaction will

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Fig. 2 The conceptual framework of product customization combining Kano and IGA
be. A worse value is usually negative, which means that if
a certain attribute is not fulfilled, customer satisfaction will
decrease; the smaller the negative value is, the stronger the
effect of decreasing customer satisfaction will be. The for-
mulae are as follows:
extent of satisfaction (better value): (Attractive + One-
dimensional)/(Attractive + One-dimensional + Must-be +
Indifferent)
extent of dissatisfaction (worse value): (One-dimensional
+ Must-be)/(Attractive + One-dimensional + Must-be +Indif-
ferent) × (−1)
That is:
A+O
ρ=
A+O+M+I
O+M
λ=
(A + O + M + I ) × (−1)
where ρ and λ are the better value and worse value, respec-
tively; A, O, M and I correspond to a certain attribute’s total
response frequency of attractive qualities, one-dimensional
qualities, must-be qualities and indifferent qualities, respec-
tively.
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The Kano classification results of every customizable
product attribute and their corresponding better-worse val-
ues are used to dynamically guide configuring the product
attributes for customization in an IGA-based product design
process. More concretely, they are used to guide popula-
tion initialization and achieve a product attribute active state
adjustment strategy whose details are explained by Algo-
rithm 1 and Algorithm 2 respectively in the next section. To
summarize, a conceptual framework is given as shown in
Fig. 2 By implementing the Kano model, a manufacturer
can better understand customer requirements and provide
them with highly personalized design schemes that fully meet
individual preferences with the benefit of a computer-aided
design system integrating Kano and IGA. The details of this
framework will be further introduced in the following sec-
tions.
IGA-based product design integrating a
customizable attribute recognition strategy
According to the results of the Kano analysis, in this sec-
tion, an IGA-based product design method integrating a
J Intell Manuf
customizable attribute recognition strategy is proposed to
allow customers to more quickly finding their satisfying
design schemes and to mitigate user fatigue in the customiza-
tion process; the Kano model embodies itself mainly in the
initialized and evolutionary process of the population. The
reverse qualities (R) negatively influence customer satisfac-
tion. Adjusting them during customization has no value to
improve the efficiency. Questionable results (Q) lead to para-
doxes when explaining the results. According to Table 1, no
matter whether the attributes marked as questionable results
are fulfilled or not, customers hold the same extreme atti-
tude. These results are regarded as noises and should be
eliminated. Consequently, neither reverse qualities nor ques-
tionable results will be discussed in this section.
We define individual d as a design scheme, which has q
product attributes for customization. Then, design scheme
d represents a q − dimensional vector
whose form is 12 inches.
v ( f 1 ) , v ( f 2 ) , . . . , v ( f i ) , . . . v f q , of which v ( f i ) is
one possible value of the i th customizable product attribute
f i . For each f i , K ( f i ) ∈ {A, O, M, I } is defined as the
Kano model classification of this attribute. ρ (fi ) and λ ( f i )
are defined as the better value and worse value of the attribute,
respectively. S ( f i ) ∈ {true, false} represents the customiza-
tion activating state of the attributes.
Next, designing within the IGA-based product design
method integrating customizable attribute recognition strat-
egy will be discussed in detail, including the structure
of chromosomes, population size, initialized population,
genetic operations and terminal criterion when applying IGA.
Structure of chromosomes
The interaction model of single-click is used; to follow the
model, users are asked to click the mouse once in each evalu-
ation process. The design scheme of products is encoded by
integer. In general, one product attribute can obtain its value
from a range of continuous value (such as the screen size
of a tablet PC), a range of discrete value (such as alterna-
tives to tablet PC contours) or a range of binary value (such
as the ability to support Bluetooth). A binary value, a type
of special discrete value, does not need extra transformation,
but continuous values need to be discretized and transformed
into discrete values. For example, the screen size of a tablet
PC, which is continuous, can be classified into several differ-
scheme individual v 0 ( f 1 ) , v0 ( f 2 ) , . . . , v0
ent discrete styles including “less than 12 inches,” “12–13
inches,” “13–14 inches,” “14–15 inches” and “more than
15 in.” For each attribute, all of the possible values are coded
and sorted one by one by the significance level of the attribute
difference from one extreme to another extreme beginning
with 0. For instance, the ability to support Bluetooth con-
tains two possible values, where “unsupported” is coded as
0 and “supported” is coded as 1. For another instance, the
screen size of a tablet PC can be sorted from the smallest to
the largest and coded as 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. Once the position
and the order of customizable product attributes in the chro-
mosome structure are fixed, they will no longer be changed,
so a coded design scheme individual can be decoded in the
same way. Thus, the chromosome structure of an individ-
ual is a q-bit long character string. Each bit corresponds to
an integer that represents a concrete value of one product
attribute. Let us suppose that one tablet PC product has only
two customizable attributes, which are “screen size” and “the
ability to support Bluetooth,” and that they take up the first
position and the second position of the chromosome, respec-
tively. Now, there is an individual coded as “(0,0)”; written
in a simplified form, this is the character string “00”. Then,
the individual can be decoded as a Bluetooth-unsupported
tablet PC design scheme with a screen size of less than
Population size
Compared to GA, it is also important for IGA to set up a
reasonable population size N , but the population size of IGA
is generally much smaller than that of GA. N represents the
number of individuals in population. For users to directly
evaluate design scheme individuals through the graphical
user interface (GUI), a larger N may increase the complex-
ity of the design process, confusing customers and leading to
user fatigue. However, a smaller N will lead to the issue of
over speed convergence, a situation in which the algorithm
has difficulty finding the most satisfying design scheme indi-
vidual. In general, we make N = 4 − 9 (Mok et al. 2013;
Rodriguez et al. 2011), which makes a balance between the
operation complexity and the effectiveness of IGA-based
design process. At the same time, individuals can be orga-
nized and displayed very well on computer screen under this
kind of parameter setting.
Initialization
In this phase, the method randomly generates N initial design
scheme individuals considering the Kano model classifica-
tion and customization activation state of their attributes. A
pattern design
( f i ) , . . . v0 f q is first constructed as a subjective judg-
ment of customers’ most satisfying solution according to
professional design teams’ or experts’ knowledge, experi-
ence and analysis. The initial population is then generated
according to Algorithm 1. For any individual, its activated
customizable attributes are randomly assigned a reasonable
value, but the inactivated attributes are assigned pattern indi-
vidual’s attribute values correspondingly.
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Genetic operations
In this phase, select, crossover and mutation operations are
iteratively applied to individuals in population evolution. The
activation state of each customizable attribute needs to be
checked and correspondingly adjusted before each operation
cycle’s start. Inactivated attributes occupy gene position as
activated attributes do, but their values are not changed when
crossover and mutation are applied. When all attributes are in
an activated state, the proposed method deteriorates into the
traditional IGA-based product design method. The activation
state adjusting strategy aims to reduce the number of prod-
uct attributes for customization at an early stage; therefore,
it eases the burden of design scheme evaluation, mitigates
user fatigue, and allows customers to more quickly find
their satisfying design schemes. The follow-up stage meets
more personalized design schemes halfway by investing
more production capability: if one customer is not satisfied
with the current design result, more available attributes for
customization are gradually presented for a greater person-
alization level, according to these attributes’ influence on
customer satisfaction. The strategy can also fully save man-
ufacturers’ production resources because customers have an
opportunity to find their most satisfying individual within
limited customizable attributes at an early customization
stage.
We suppose that the attributes classified into category A
and category I in the Kano model constitute a set Aset and
a set Iset , respectively. The current population is defined as
the population of the t th generation, which corresponds to
an indicator indext . The activation state adjusting strategy
is presented as Algorithm 2, where ε is a given border value
controlling the adjustment process and δ ∈ (0, 1) is an adjust-
ment coefficient.
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Using single-click, customers choose the best current indi-
vidual from all design scheme individuals in the current
population through the GUI. Next, the crossover operation
starts. The method applies a multi-point discrete crossover
operation at a probability pc . For each individual in the cur-
rent population that has not yet been selected, the crossover
operation first generates an unordered binary string randomly
whose length is the same as that of an individual chromo-
some, and the ratio r of 0 to 1 in the string is decided by a
given parameter. Then, every attribute value at the “1” posi-
tion of each chromosome is replaced by the mapping value of
the individual selected by the customer. The mutation oper-
ation starts at a probability pm after the crossover operation.
Every activated customizable attribute of each individual in
the current population has the opportunity at a probability pm
to change its value once randomly within the available value
range. When the mutation is completed, a new population is
generated, and then every step is repeated again in the next
operation cycle.
Termination criterion
Once a customer finds his most satisfying design scheme
individual or gives up the current design on his own initia-
tive, the IGA-based customization process will terminate.
The design system will record the customers’ most satisfy-
ing individual and feed this information back to the product
manufacturer.
Above all, IGA-based product design process integrating
a customizable attribute recognition strategy can be repre-
sented as shown in Fig. 3 The first phase is mainly about
Kano analysis and product attribute recognition, and the sec-
J Intell Manuf

Fig. 3 IGA-based product design process integrating a customizable attribute recognition strategy

ond one is the combined Kano and IGA process. The Kano Case study
analysis results are used to guide generate an initial pop-
ulation and dynamically adjust the active states of product Tablet PCs, as a type of product for mass consumption with
attributes for customization in the IGA process. both visual attributes for design and functional attributes for

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Fig. 4 A 3D rendered tablet PC
design scheme
configuration, has strong customizability for its modular pro-
duction. Moreover, products of this type have frequent design
iterations and upgrades at a high rate. Therefore, this section
uses tablet PC design as an example to verify the maneu-
verability and effectiveness of the proposed method. Using
this method, customers can quickly customize visual design
attributes and functional configuration attributes of tablet PCs
and obtain a design scheme, such as the product shown in
Fig. 4, according to their own personal preferences. (Func-
tional attribute customization cannot be embodied and are
not shown in the figure).
Referencing some E-business websites’ product cate-
gories and the design experience, the paper first recognized
18 possible customizable product attributes including color,
material, and size and then constructed a Kano model ques-
tionnaire that contains 18 pairs of questions according to the
steps introduced in “Kano analysis of customizable product
attributes” section. Each pair of questions are about posi-
tive and negative aspects of one attribute respectively. Kano
model aims at requirement collaboration. The results of Kano
classification reflect a general consumer taste, which guar-
antees the approach we proposed has its own universality. In
the Kano analysis, to guarantee that the Kano model inter-
viewees and actual customization participants came from the
same crowd, we handed out the questionnaire to those who
are younger than 30 years old but older than 18 years old
through an Internet channel and collected 46 valid question-
naire responses in total during a one-week survey period.
Since the interviewees are regarded as potential customers,
we don’t restrict what kind of purchasing habit they should
have. In other words, some of them may have experience
of purchasing customized products, but some others may be
used to purchase products in a traditional way. Question-
naire reliability was examined by calculating Cronbach’s
α coefficient. The result was 0.850, which means that the
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investigation has a relatively high reliability and permits the
following experiment to have statistically firm conclusions.
According to the questionnaire responses, all attributes can
be classified into different Kano categories and can be cal-
culated corresponding to better-worse values, as shown in
Table 2. The results show that all customizable attributes of
tablet PCs are mainly classified into “Attractive” and “Indif-
ferent,” which follows general phenomena observed in the
product market. In other words, for the crowd represented by
Kano survey interviewees, it is tolerable to purchase a tablet
PC in a traditional way without customization, which is the
mainstream of the current market, but customizing product
attributes can further improve customer satisfaction.
All possible values of each attribute are coded and shown
in Table 3 according to the steps described previously.
In this case, there is no attribute classified as “one-
dimensional” or “must-be,” so at the very beginning of
product customization, no activated attribute exists in the
initial population. Customization participants will first eval-
uate whether the given pattern design scheme is their most
satisfying individual or not; then, the activating states of cus-
tomizable attributes in the population will be dynamically
adjusted by proceeding with the participants’ operations.
With the reference of design experience, a pattern design
scheme coded as “202403112101221200” is given, which
represents a subjective judgment of customers’ most satis-
fying solution. In this case, the number of product attributes
for customization q = 18, population size N = 8, crossover
probability pc = 1, mutation probability pm = 0.05, r = 1,
ε = 1.5 and δ = 0.1. These parameter values are determined
through a pre-experiment. We define an initial population
that has t = 0.
Two computer-aided design system prototypes developed
with the reference of the proposed product design method
are shown in Fig. 5, of which a is the screenshot of a
J Intell Manuf

Table 2 Kano classifications of attributes for customization and their better-worse values
Features for customization Percentage(%) Kano classification ρ λ
A O M R I Q

Battery time 45.65 19.57 4.35 2.17 23.91 4.35 A 0.70 −0.26
Color 58.70 8.70 6.52 0.00 26.09 0.00 A 0.67 −0.15
Size 52.17 8.70 2.17 2.17 32.61 2.17 A 0.64 −0.11
Internal storage 50.00 10.87 6.52 0.00 28.26 4.35 A 0.64 −0.18
HDMI output 45.65 13.04 2.17 2.17 34.78 2.17 A 0.61 −0.16
Weight 41.30 13.04 2.17 2.17 32.61 8.70 A 0.61 −0.17
Hard disk storage 47.83 13.04 6.52 0.00 32.61 0.00 A 0.61 −0.20
Style 47.83 8.70 0.00 2.17 39.13 2.17 A 0.59 −0.09
Screen 41.30 13.04 4.35 4.35 36.96 0.00 A 0.57 −0.18
Network mode 39.13 15.22 6.52 0.00 36.96 2.17 A 0.56 −0.22
Operating system 41.30 6.52 4.35 6.52 39.13 2.17 A 0.52 −0.12
Touch mode 34.78 15.22 4.35 6.52 36.96 2.17 I 0.55 −0.21
Camera resolution 36.96 13.04 4.35 2.17 39.13 4.35 I 0.53 −0.19
CPU 39.13 6.52 4.35 4.35 43.48 2.17 I 0.49 −0.12
Bluetooth 30.43 13.04 4.35 0.00 47.83 4.35 I 0.45 −0.18
Material 34.78 6.52 2.17 2.17 54.35 0.00 I 0.42 −0.09
Telephone 30.43 6.52 0.00 2.17 56.52 4.35 I 0.40 −0.07
DSDS 34.78 4.35 2.17 0.00 56.52 2.17 I 0.40 −0.07

traditional IGA-based system, and b is the screenshot of
the proposed system. In our experiment, traditional IGA
creates individuals randomly to achieve population initial-
ization and doesn’t integrate Kano model and Kano analysis
results into its process, which are different from the pro-
posed approach. Eight design scheme individuals are divided
into two rows and displayed on the screen. The individual
on which the mouse pointer hovers is marked in pink. For
the customization system integrating the Kano model, the
label of inactivated customizable attributes and its value are
marked in grey. We randomly invited college students who
are not Kano investigation interviewees but are from the same
age group to take part in product customization as potential
customers. Two people were grouped together to take part
in a contrast experiment between a traditional IGA-based
product design method and the proposed method. All para-
meter values are equivalent for both methods except ε and δ,
which are not used in traditional IGA. The contrast exper-
iment was independently carried out three times, and we
respectively recorded the experiment results of the two differ-
ent methods, including the generation frequency of finding
the most satisfying individual, the whole length of the IGA-
based customization phase, and the time required to evaluate
each generation. Time cost, which is mainly embodied by
the total time consumption to finish IGA-based customiza-
tion and the time consumption to evaluate each generation, is
an important criterion to evaluate whether the performance of
the proposed method is good or not. Customers are sensitive
to even tiny improvement in time consumption, especially
when they directly interact with the design system online.
We did not ask the same person to customize a product using
the two different methods because the results of the first cus-
tomization process may be a prejudgment for the person’s
most satisfying design scheme, therefor affecting the relia-
bility of the second customization process.
According to the experiment results, the proposed method
can improve customization efficiency to a large extent and
allow customers to more quickly find their most satisfying
individuals. Some effort by the customer is still needed, but
it is much smaller than with the traditional IGA. Genera-
tion frequencies of three contrast experiment groups under
the two different methods are shown in Fig. 6. The gen-
eration frequency results under the proposed method are
slightly higher than those under the traditional IGA-based
method because few attributes that are not activated at an
early stage may be the attributes that one customer cares
about most, but overall, the proposed method provides cus-
tomers with the possibility of finding their most satisfying
individuals at an early stage of operation. Generation fre-
quency also implies the number of customers’ mouse clicks
during the design process because the developed system pro-
totypes adopts a “single-click” interactive mode so that each
round of generation evaluation only needs the customer to
click once. Therefore, the generation frequency results of the
proposed method are reasonable and acceptable. The whole
length of the IGA-based customization phase and the time

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Table 3 Possible values of tablet PC attributes and their codes

Features Values and codes

Battery time f 1 <4 h 4–6 h 6–8 h 8–10 h 10–12 h >12 h

0 1 2 3 4 5
Color f 2 Black Gray White Multi-color
0 1 2 3
Size f 3 <5 in. 5–7 in. 7–9 in. 9–11 in. >11 in.
0 1 2 3 4
Internal storage f 4 512 MB 1 GB 2 GB 3 GB 4 GB 8 GB 16 GB
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
HDMI output f 5 Unsupported Supported
1 2
Weight f 6 <200 g 200–300 g 300–400 g 400–500 g 500–600 g 600–700 g >700 g
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Hard disk storage f 7 <8 GB 8–32 GB 32–64 GB >64 GB
1 2 3
Style f 8 For children Normal Transformable
0 1 2
Screen f 9 Inky Clear HD UHD Retina
0 1 2 3 4
Network mode f 10 Wifi Wifi+3G Wifi+4G
0 1 2
Operating system f 11 Android IOS Windows Kindle
0 1 2 3
Touch mode f 12 Capacitive Rheostatic Piezoelectric
0 1 2
Camera <200 200–400 400–600 600–800 >800
resolution f 13 million PX million PX million PX million PX million PX
0 1 2 3 4
CPU f 14 Apple NVIDIA Intel ARM
0 1 2 3
Bluetooth f 15 Unsupported Supported
0 1
Material f 16 Carbon fiber Plastic Metal
0 1 2
Telephone f 17 Unsupported Supported
0 1
DSDS f 18 Unsupported Supported
0 1

required to evaluate each generation of three contrast exper-
iment groups under the two different methods are shown in
Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. It should be noted that generation
frequency between two different methods can be different
because generation frequency depends on when customer
finds the most satisfying individual and ends the customiza-
tion process, and different people may experience different
population evolution processes to obtain their personalized
design schemes for they having different preferences. The
proposed method effectively shortens the user’s operation
time because, according to the experiment results, both the
whole length of the IGA-based customization phase and
the time required to evaluate each generation of the pro-
posed method groups are all less than the corresponding time
consumption of the traditional IGA-based method groups.
Consequently, the proposed method is able to fully relieve
the user fatigue that may appear during product customiza-
tion process.

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Fig. 5 Design system prototypes with a population of eight individuals. a Traditional IGA-based design process. b The proposed design process

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Traditional IGA 50
Traditional IGA
20 Kano-based IGA 45 Kano-based IGA
40
18
35
16

Time (seconds)
30
14
25
Generation frequency

12
20

10 15

8 10

6 5

0
4 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

2 Generation
Group1
0 50
Group1 Group2 Group3 Traditional IGA
45 Kano-based IGA
Experimental groups
40
Fig. 6 Generation frequency of finding the most satisfying individual
(times) Time (seconds) 35

30
Traditional IGA
25
Kano-based IGA
20
260
15
240

220 10

200 5
180
0
Total time (seconds)

160 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

140
Generation
Group2
120
50
100 Traditional IGA
80 45 Kano-based IGA

60 40
40
35
20
Time (seconds)

30
0
Group1 Group2 Group3 25

Experimental groups 20

15
Fig. 7 The whole length of the IGA-based customization phase (s)
10

5
With the benefits of the Kano model, the proposed
0
method integrates a customizable attribute recognition strat-
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
egy into IGA-based product customization. On the one Generation
hand, this method controls the number of customizable Group3
attributes that customers need to evaluate during the cus-
tomization process, therefor decreasing design complex- Fig. 8 Time required to evaluate each generation (s)

123
J Intell Manuf
ity; on the other hand, it has no negative influence on
customer satisfaction based on the effective Kano analy-
sis, but it can highly efficiently meet customer require-
ments.
Conclusion
This paper integrates the customizable attribute recogni-
tion strategy based on Kano analysis results into IGA-
based product customization and proposes an IGA-based
product design method using the strategy of customiz-
able attribute recognition. By dynamically adjusting the
activation states of customizable product attributes accord-
ing to their influence on customer satisfaction during the
design process, the strategy achieves a balance between
the demand of searching for a personalized design scheme
and manufacturers’ actual production capacity. The pro-
posed method effectively improves product customization
efficiency by allowing customers to more quickly find their
satisfying design schemes while solving the user fatigue
issue.
A limitation of this paper is that the effectiveness of
the proposed method depends to some degree on the
Kano model analysis results. If there is large difference in
crowd positioning between the Kano model interviewees
and those who actually participate in product customiza-
tion, the guiding role that the Kano analysis results played
in the following product customization will be somewhat
restricted. In this situation, the interviewees and the fol-
lowing customization participants are in different segment
markets, so the interviewees’ preferences to customizable
product attributes will be different and cannot fully repre-
sent the customization participants’ preferences. The current
accuracy and effectiveness of the Kano analysis results
will decrease. In the worst case, theoretically, the effi-
ciency of the proposed method may be even worse than
that of the traditional IGA-based product customization
method. Thus, it is very important for the proposed method
to recognize and judge the Kano analysis interviewees’
hierarchy of consumption and the customization partici-
pants’ market position in advance. In addition, although
the method improves the product customization phase in
which customers are directly involved, the entire product
customization lifecycle will be extended due to the pres-
ence of the Kano investigation phase before the actual design
process.
In the future, studies will further improve the accuracy
of the Kano model classification, consider market segmenta-
tion, and strengthen the guiding role that the Kano analysis
results play in IGA-based product customization. Product
customization processes may be further optimized by inte-
grating an improved Kano model.
Acknowledgements This research is partially supported by research
grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant Nos.71201115, 71471128 and 71271148. The authors are very
grateful to all anonymous reviewers whose invaluable comments and
suggestions substantially helped improve the quality of the paper.
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