Design of breastfeeding chairs for maternity rooms based on Kano-AHP-QFD: User requirement-driven design approach

Abstract

In maternity rooms, breastfeeding chairs are crucial pieces of equipment that greatly influence the breastfeeding experience. However, an abundance of data indicates that there are still issues with breastfeeding chairs, including inadequate support for breastfeeding, poor body type adaptability, and failure to adequately analyse the requirements of mothers and baby users. This study used an innovative research approach to breastfeeding chair design from the standpoint of user requirements to improve breastfeeding willingness and user experience. We propose a user requirement assessment design approach that integrates the Kano model, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and quality function development (QFD) based on the requirements of mother and baby groups. This approach was intended to build a user experience evaluation model for mother- and baby-friendly products. Following this approach to breastfeeding chair design, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) was used to assess the chair. Compared to the original breastfeeding chairs, the designs of breastfeeding chairs that met important requirements for mothers and infants, such as safety, hygiene, and breastfeeding support, resulted in an approximately 23 % increase in user satisfaction. This effectively improved the user experience of both mothers and infants. This approach is centred on the basic requirements of mothers and babies. It evaluates the essential requirements that impact the breastfeeding experiences of mothers and babies and provides multifaceted data regarding the attributes of the different requirements of mothers and babies. This results in theoretical research references for ensuing user-driven design products that cater to the requirements of mothers and their infants and play a pivotal role in formulating design guidelines for mother- and baby-friendly products.