| الملخص: | The restrictions and limitations due to mobility in daily activities for certain people in the society have inspired designers and researchers to come up with various inventions of assistive device just to fulfil the needs. Among them, the most common and widely used mobility devices by the people are manual and powered wheelchairs. However, the current wheelchair for instance, either manual or powered, still leaves a big gap in understanding specifications and conflicting of design and expectation between the user with physical disabilities and the designer. This phenomenon leads to a big gap between psychological aspects of human and technical element of product used. Thus, this research attempted to fill in the gap to understand the psychological need of assistive device design from the viewpoint of users. KJ Method, a method widely used in Kansei Engineering, was used to breakdown design category classification from a targeted concept to physical design characteristics. It involved the steps (1) compiling and synthesizing Kansei Words derived from journals, product’s website, and related studies that relates to the product, (2) Clustering of Kansei Words into their affinity by experts, and (3) Category classification of Kansei concept into specific design characteristic of the product based on user requirement. The research then employed expert to validate the affinity and classification, and a designer to develop a prototype according to the category classification to test feasibility of the design guide. The success of designing the prototype shows that new design based on users’ expectation can be developed, and thus minimizing gaps of design expectation with designer’s inspiration. This will ultimately contribute to the optimum understanding of end-user’s psychological requirements and designer’s product design specifications. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.
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