Prospect of Design for Mass Customization and Personalization

The prevailing practice of design for mass customization manifests itself through a configure-to-order paradigm, which means to satisfy explicit customer needs and built upon legacy design. With pervasive connectivity and interactivity of the Internet and sensor networks, personalization has been witnessed in a number of industry sectors as a promising strategy that makes the market of one a reality. This positioning paper envisions an extension to design for mass customization and personalization (DFMCP). By exploiting implicit market demand information and revealing latent customer needs, DFMCP aspires to assist customers in making better informed decisions, and to the largest extent, to anticipate customer satisfaction and adapt to customer delight. Based on a multiverse of user experience, product differentiation and co-creation, the key issues of DFMCP are discussed.