An emotional designed based hybrid MCDM framework for the next generation embedded system configurations

Emotions play a critical role in human's ability to understanding and learning about the world and new things. Furthermore, the concept of user-centered system design (UCSD), which emphasizes the importance of having a good understanding of the users, is emerging as a core of modern design methods. Traditionally, new product development team defined high technology products in general and embedded systems in special, based on their intuition. However, this kind of design methodology can be subjective and misleading. Users' emotions and requirements were not really considered. Thus, this paper aims to resolve this issue by introducing a hybrid fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (FMCDM) based design methodology consisting of Interpretive Structure Modeling (ISM), Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchical Process (FAHP) and Fuzzy Integral by introducing the concept of emotional design. Thirteen senior managers from world's leading IT system companies as well as IC design houses were invited for configuring a FMCDM framework for the next generation handset designs and verified the feasibility. In the future, the proposed framework can be used to configure any embedded system to be embedded in consumer electronics products.