A model of product-induced pain.

Summary In industry circles, customer " pain points " has replaced customer needs as the source of ideas for products and services. The premise is that the more pressing the 'pain', the more likely the customer will seek to find a solution. In this article, we develop a model to describe customer pain induced by a product. The model includes semantics to describe the pain elements and relations between the semantics. We evaluate the model to ascertain the extent to which individuals can use it consistently to identify pain points in a dataset of consumer product injuries. The paper concludes with a discussion on the use of the model in a pain-minimization design process, in which the aim is to bring essential health, social, and economic value.