Development of an ergonomic product development process reflecting quantified customer preference

In the past, manufacturers used to determine the quality of products, but the trend of today's market becomes more into customer-driven. As a result, demands from customers are becoming more diverse and complicated, and most companies are obligated to meet their needs. As one of the efforts to achieve their satisfaction, companies are now emphasizing activities to find out what customers specifically want and extract voice of customer (VOC). This study attempts to develop an ergonomic product development process as a method to maximally reflect the VOC. In order to meet this goal, ergonomic design guidelines, which are possible to be classified according that user's human characteristics, will be recommended. Even now, there are numerous design guidelines already existing in the ergonomics literature. However, it is not realistically feasible to review all of those guidelines, and some of them are even conflicting with each other. Therefore, in this paper, the product development process, which prioritizes the human characteristics that reflect customer needs and applies the design guidelines that meet the most important ones, will be suggested. Finally, the research was described to show the validity of the product development process through an example of a mobile phone development case.