Emotional Engineering: Service Development

In an age of increasing complexity, diversification and changes, customers expect services that will cater to their needs and to their tastes. Emotional Engineering describes how their expectations can be satisfied and managed throughout the product life cycle, if greater attention is paid to emotion. Emotion plays a crucial role in value recognition, but it is also important for team working - which extends beyond human-human to human-machine and human-environment - and for enabling us to cope with changeable situations.

Traditional products have been developed without much consideration of context. The value of products, however, is determined in their working contexts. Service is to provide the greatest utility in the current context. Therefore, the twenty-first century is the time to develop services beyond product realization. As emotion is very much multidisciplinary, there are many works in different fields, that are unknown or unfamiliar elsewhere. Emotional Engineering is intended to provide a bird’s eye view on its research and applications. This book will help readers to make strategic decisions on how they can go beyond product realization. It is recommended for all pioneers in industry, academia and government, who are trying to create value in partnership with their customers.

Shuichi Fukuda received his doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tokyo. After working in the Department of Precision Machinery, University of Tokyo, he moved to the Welding Research Institute, Osaka University. Later he worked concurrently at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo. He became Full Professor of Systems and Management Engineering at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology and was also Visiting Professor at West Virginia University, Stanford University, Osaka University and Cranfield University. Since his retirement, he has continued in his position as Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, as well as working as Consulting Professor at Stanford University and concurrently as Visiting Professor at the Open University of Japan.