The Next Stage of Engineering: From How and What to Why

Abstract

This is a position paper to discuss the future direction of our engineering. We have been making our efforts to develop better products, believing that would satisfy our customers. When they needed products, this strategy worked very well. But as products come to abound, people look for mental satisfaction. Their expectations diversified and became very much personalized. Therefore, another engineering is called for. Engineering up to now is focusing attention on extrinsic experience, but in order to satisfy these customers, we have to consider why they ask for such products. To find out why, we have to look into their intrinsic motivations and satisfy them. Such intrinsic motivation-focused approach will be prerequisite in our engineering tomorrow. The following are pointed out. (1) We used to attach value to products, but now processes yield value, as User Experience demonstrates. (2) Users are not passive consumers, but active and creative customers, who would like to customizer and personalize their products. Thus, it becomes increasingly important how to externalize their intrinsic motivations. (3) Although hardware development is product-focused, software development in continuous prototyping style is process-driven and it is more linked to intrinsic motivations. (4) Such new technologies as Additive Manufacturing, 3D Printing, etc. unleash us from the traditional constraints of work flow so that we can process works very freely without paying too much attention to their sequences. Thus, they should be interpreted as tools to externalize intrinsic motivations rather than to facilitate the current production. (5) Industrie 4.0 should also be interpreted from this viewpoint.