kano-model
Concept of the skill
What it is: The Kano model is Noriaki Kano's quality and customer-satisfaction framework for classifying features by how customers react when the feature is present and when it is absent.
Mental model: A feature does not have one universal priority score. For a specific customer segment, its presence and absence create a response pattern: must-be basics prevent dissatisfaction, performance attributes move satisfaction proportionally, attractive features delight when present, indifferent features do little, reverse features hurt, and questionable responses need cleanup.
Why it exists: Agents often treat every requested feature as a backlog item with a score. Kano reasoning asks what kind of satisfaction mechanism the feature has before ranking it.
What it is NOT: It is not RICE, ICE, MoSCoW, expected value, open-ended research synthesis, product positioning, or a substitute for non-negotiable safety, accessibility, reliability, or legal requirements.
Adjacent concepts: customer needs, voice of customer, quality function deployment, feature prioritization, delighters, hygiene factors, product research, segmentation, roadmap planning, satisfaction coefficients.
One-line analogy: Kano analysis is a control panel where different levers stop alarms, steadily raise satisfaction, create surprise delight, do nothing, or make the wrong users unhappy.
Common misconception: Delighters are not automatically the top priority. Basics that are missing can dominate satisfaction, and a delighter can become expected over time.